The key concept: Everything on X/Twitter (except direct messages) is PUBLIC
- There are millions of posts a day – everyone CAN see everything you post but that doesn’t mean they WILL see it!
- Think of X as giant free river of information – one that lets you zero in on the things you’re most interested in and reach people who might be interested in what YOU have to say. You can dip your toe in the river as often or as infrequently as you like, and there are ways to help you filter the torrent so it's most useful to you.
- Unlike Facebook, you can use X for a larger professional purpose. Personal info is OK to share in limited quantities on a professional account. Or if you want to post frequently about a topic of personal interest, consider making a separate account using another email address.
- Posts with links, images, or videos are more engaging and more likely to spark interaction.
Speaking "X"
Name and handle – In general, it’s better to use a variation of your real name for both.
Your handle has an @ before it and cannot have spaces in it; it is unique to you and is considered your username.
Your X name is what shows up in bold type at the start of each tweet; it can be up to 20 characters and can have spaces. If you have a common name, add your degree, title or a representative word to distinguish you from others with the same name. You can change your X name in “Edit Profile”; go into Settings to change your handle.
Profile page – Your profile at x.com/yourhandle includes your bio, posts, and tabs showing your followers, who you follow, and more.
Bio – A short description of you, limited to 160 characters. Include brief professional and even some personal info, as well as X handles of entities you’re affiliated with. Don’t include a URL – put that in the Website box instead. (Best practice: link to your official web profile or LinkedIn page)
Posting on X – A post on X, with a limit of 280 characters (including spaces), emojis and the handles of any people or entities you are mentioning.
- Abbreviations, acronyms, shorthand, are all fair game to keep a post short!
- Images (including uploaded and live videos, and GIFs) do not take up any of your character count. Nor do the Twitter handles of any Twitter users whose tweet you are replying to or tagging in an image.
- Web links – no matter how long the URL is – take up 23 characters.
Hashtags – A # followed immediately by a word, acronym or phrase with no spaces between words.
- Hashtags are “buzzwords” that make it easy for people to see what X users are saying about a particular topic, concept, event or piece of news.
- Hashtags turn into hyperlinks automatically! Click them to see other tweets that use the same hashtag.
- Hashtags act as a powerful search tools – i.e. #Medicare, #hcreform (health care reform), #ptsafety (patient safety) Use them to expose your tweets to a larger audience
- Posting at a conference or lecture? Be sure to use any hashtag the organizers have chosen so that others can see your tweets. It’s a great way to find people to follow, or to follow parallel sessions you can’t make it to!
- There is no “official” source of hashtags – X users make them up all the time. But their value comes from being used by multiple people. Need to find a health-related hashtag? See http://www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags/ to see what’s popular. Or type a # followed by a keyword or acronym to see how popular a hashtag is, and whether it’s being used to mean what you want to say!
Following – When you’ve elected to see someone’s posts as part of your feed. Following someone doesn’t mean you endorse everything they say. But everyone else can see who you follow.
You create your own experience of X by who you choose to follow. Search for people or institutions/organizations in your subfield. X will “learn” what you like and suggest others you might want to follow. Have fun with it – Follow your favorite comedian, musician or actor.
If someone’s tweets aren’t useful/interesting, stop following them. They can’t tell easily.
Tip: Find the X profile of someone you admire in your field, and see who they are following. Chances are you will want to follow those accounts too!
Follower – Someone who has chosen to see YOUR tweets in their main stream of tweets. Don’t confuse this with Facebook friending – strangers can choose to follow you on X and it’s not creepy! However, if someone is annoying to you can block them from following you.
Liking – If you want to signal that you approve of or appreciate a tweet, click the heart icon. The tweets you have liked are visible via your profile, but liking a tweet doesn’t pass it along for others to see.
Retweeting/quoting a tweet – When you see a tweet you agree with, or want to comment on or share with others, you can “retweet” it to pass it along to your followers without adding your own comment.
You can also “add a comment” when you retweet, which gives you 140 characters to add your thoughts as you pass the tweet along. You can also use the comment option to retweet your own past tweets, with a new comment, to re-surface them to your followers.
Mentioning/tagging – Putting someone else’s X handle (with the @ sign) in your tweet or entering their handle in the “who’s in this picture?” description for an image that you are tweeting. X lets the person know you’re talking about them, or want to give them credit for something. Mentioning someone is also a way to subtly ask for a retweet.
Use mentioning and tagging to share kudos about a colleague, get ideas or resources from colleagues, or even voice your concern or question about a flight delay to an airline.
Reply – Answering back to a post by someone else, or yourself. The “quote bubble” icon under each tweet makes this easy. Make a “thread” of posts by replying multiple times to an initial tweet that you send, to share multiple thoughts and links on the same topic. X will connect them via vertical lines.
Post tagging – If you START a new post with someone’s handle, you are speaking directly to that person/institution, to get their attention or ask them a question. But the post will also be publicly visible.
Direct messaging – You can conduct a PRIVATE conversation via Direct Messaging with people you follow who also follow you, and with some individuals who have enabled anyone to “DM” them.
Sharing links – Posts with links are more engaging, and X doesn’t count all the characters in a URL! Plus, many websites now have special programming that makes X display the main image on a page when you post a link to that page.
Sharing from a web page – Many pages on news sites, etc. have icons that you can click to post directly from that page, and share the URL. When you use one of these, it may automatically fill in the text of the post but you can (and should) change it. Add your own comment - people want to know why you think it’s worth reading!
Sharing images and videos – When you’re composing a post, you can add a photo that you just took or already had, a video that you create live or upload, animated GIFs, infographics or other images such as screenshots of a sentence, quote, paragraph or printed page. This makes your tweet much more eye-catching. You can also tag someone in a photo by listing their X handle in the “Who’s In This Picture” field – which means you don’t have to use some of your tweet character limit to include their handle. Videos are limited to 2 minutes and 20 seconds, but you can’t tag someone.
Sharing slides -- At conferences, don’t be surprised if people shoot and post images of a presenter’s best slide(s). You can do it too. If you are giving a talk and DON’T want someone to post an image of a particular slide (i.e. preliminary data) say so right before you show the side.
Trends – An X-generated list of topics and hashtags that are being talked about on X right now. You’ll see a list of current trends on the left side of your screen, or the first search page of your app. This list is customized by X based on your interests, location and past activity.
Lists – A way to organize the X accounts of certain people & entities, and zero in on their posts. You can make a list of people who tweet about a particular topic, and check it daily. Or, look at another person’s lists to find potential followers or people you might want to follow. You can even subscribe to a list made by someone else (Such as x.com/UM_IHPI/lists/ihpi-members) More info: https://support.twitter.com/articles/76460
X chats – A set time when a group of users log on and use a particular hashtag to discuss and share info on a particular topic, in a way that is public and open to anyone to anyone in that topic. Find ones you can take part in via search! Institutions, journals and professional societies also offer X chats as a way to showcase a particular expert or topic.
Poll: You can create a poll with up to four options, and post to get people’s reaction to a question. Once they’ve made a choice, it will show them and you how many people have chosen each option. Once the time period that you have specified for your poll has elapse, the results will become public.
Notifications and alerts: In your settings, you can tell X how to inform you about different events, such as someone mentioning you, liking or reposting one of your posts, replying to you, or sending you a direct message. You can have it put a little number on the "bell" symbol on the web interface or app, or have it email or even text you!
Quality vs. quantity: A bunch of quick reposts with no comments from you is fast and easy – but doesn’t take advantage of X’s potential! Try to post something in your voice every few days.