Twitter for Librarians

Monday morning and I just spent one-hour taking a NEFLIN webinar with speaker Nicole Engard. Nicole spoke on Twitter for Librarians.

Some thoughts from the session...

"Twitter syntax". Invaluable. Finally I get what the @, #, RT, etc are for.

Handouts from today's session.

Howard County Library on Twitter.

Twitter gets a bad rap as "today I ate a hot dog" site.

Twitter makes a terrible first impression (Agreed).

Why not just use e-mail? There are 600 people I am following on Twitter, and I don't want to e-mail them all. Forces you to be brief.

Twitter updates can go to your Facebook page.

Twitter is a way to keep in touch with friends, family, colleagues, anything you are interested in.

Lots of (book) authors on Twitter. Can use them to drive traffic to your library's website, blog or Twitter account.

Can put widgets for Firefox, Mac, IE, etc much like Instant Messaging widgets.

TweetDeck. Helps organize your Twitter account.

You can conduct polls on Twitter. twtpoll.com

You can "twitter" your Flickr or your Library Thing.

Twitter Policy (of one company): Our Twitter policy: Be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. Represent us well. Remember that you can’t control it once you hit “update.”

Awful Library Books (just an aside).

5 Ways for your Library to Fail at Twitter.

Good job, Nicole.

I am on Twitter at: neflinbrad