This document provides guidance on using Twitter, including how to set up an account, find people and organizations to follow, understand key Twitter features like mentions, retweets and hashtags, and tips for using Twitter for organizations and protecting privacy. The document recommends finding relevant people and groups to follow, using hashtags and retweets to engage followers, and protecting tweets to control privacy and manage interactions.

1. © John Iona
A brief guide to Twitter
Sign up for a
Twitter
account at
twitter.com
This is your Twitter
@username, or handle.
Depending on the use for
the account, choose a
username that reflects this.
Set your details for
your account.
Find people &
organisations
to follow,
whose tweets
you are going
to be
interested in
reading.
Find people by using the
search facility, but make
sure you find the right
(official) account. The
more famous, the more
“fake” accounts there
will be.

2. © John Iona
Try searching for organisations, publishers and people who
you might be interested in following.
Here are just a few suggestions:
When looking
for people to
follow, search
for publishers
or authors
that you know
and see what
comes up.
If your search for a person/organisation
doesn’t find the official account, try visiting
their official website first. There you will
often find icons/links that will take you to
their official social media pages.
Once you find
someone you want
to follow, take a look
at the account and if
you are happy, click
the follow button to
follow their tweets.
People such as Phil Bradley,
Geoff Barton and Michael Rosen.
Publishers such as Penguin,
Walker, Harper Collins and
Spinebreakers.
Authors such as Patrick Ness,
Malorie Blackman, Alan
Gibbons and Philp Ardagh.
Orgnaisations such as
National Literacy Trust, CILIP
SLG, the Society of Authors
and The Guardian teen books.
Take a look at
who others are
following to get
ideas of more
people to follow.

3. © John Iona
Your Twitter home page
Including handles
(@usernames)
means the tweet
shows up on
their feed and is
known as a
mention.
If someone mentions you,
you get an alert here
Re-tweets (RT) are tweets
that people are sharing so
that their followers can see
them.
#Hashtags used to
keyword tweets so
topics can be tweeted
and searched easily.Tweets using the
same #tag help a
topic to trend
Patrick Ness’s
Twitter handle
Hover over a
tweet to get
more options.
Reply to a tweet
and start a
conversation with
someone
Re-tweet (RT) a tweet to share with
this with the people that follow you.
This tweet will then show on their
timeline, even though they do not
follow the original tweeter
Favourite a tweet –
this is an easy way
to save a tweet to
go back to it

4. © John Iona
Tweeting as an organisation
When creating a Twitter account for your Library, or department or follow the advice below:
Only tweets of
those that you
follow …
… will show up on
your Twitter feed.
While I don’t follow
@norfolkbookworm, this tweet
was re-tweeted by The Reading
Agency, who I do follow.
So any of your tweets,
as well as anything you
re-tweet, will show up
on the feed of those
that follow you.
With this type of Twitter account, follow
people whose tweets you think you will
want to share with your followers.
This will mean that the tweets on your feed are
only those from those that might be relevant to
your followers, and the feed is not too long.
So any tweets
from this
account…
…will show up
on the feed of
every follower
of this account.
HOWEVER You do not see
the tweets of people you do
not follow.
So students can
follow your
account, and you
do not have to
worry about seeing
their tweets…
…unless you click follow

5. © John Iona
Protecting Privacy
Choose the
settings option
in the menu
here
Choose to
protect your
tweets here.
Then save
your changes.
Now Twitter
uses have to
request to
follow you.
Your tweets, who
you follow and
who follows you
remains private.
You can then choose to only accept
follow requests from relevant people.
Some privacy
advice for
school libraries
Set tweets to private and then let
pupils, parents, teachers, governors
follow you on request.
You do not need to follow them
back… as long as they follow you,
they will see your tweets and you
will not have to see theirs.
Only follow accounts which will
tweet about the sorts of things
you will want to share (RT) with
your followers so that your feed
stays uncluttered and relevant.
Share your Twitter handle
(@username) with stakeholders so
that they know how to find you.

6. © John Iona
Having other people re-tweeting your
message to their followers, will mean
you reach more and more people.
Follow people, and
hope that they follow
back.Try to tweet about the interesting
work that you are doing, special
events and feedback you have
had from others.
Tweet about positive,
interesting stories from the
media and on the web.
Twitter is all about having
a conversation, and
sharing information, good
practice, news and ideas.
How can you
use Twitter to
your advantage?
Tweet @people if you
want a particular person
to see your tweet.
What do you want to share with your
followers? Use Twitter to promote your
Library events, new books, competitions, book
trailers, photos, reviews and anything else you
can think of to increase engagement.