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So what's all the fuss about. I've been asking myself the same thing but it's time to jump in or move out of the way. Literally, move out of the way and be bypassed :) I really only have my toes in vs. jumping in but at least I'm present. Just like Facebook (which I'm only accepting friends and not much else) I have an account for Twitter but no tweets from me yet. So if you haven't already dove, followed and tweeted now is the time to sign-up: http://twitter.com. The video on the homepage from Common Craft was my favorite part so don't forget to check that out.

Brent shared some resources with us and I wanted you to read them and post your comments in addition to your experience with Twitter:

Once you're all set to go, you can follow us: http://twitter.com/ksdl. If you have any interesting DL Tweets, please send them to Dorothy. She'll be extra appreciative if we can all pitch in to the daily updates.

Comments

Dorothy said…
Mahalo Christy for focusing on Twitter for our next owau discussion. I also enjoyed viewing the video. :) I'm a newbie with Twitter too. I thought why not just dive right in to see if we could find our DL niche. It definitely helped that Brent had already begun tweeting before I did. The resource links he provided were useful to me as I tried to conceptualize how we could utilize Twitter for KSDL, especially from the marketing/recruitment end.

After tweeting for a couple of weeks now, I found it to be pretty easy to update. With a max of 150 characters, it makes you condense everything and think about what you'd like to really tweet about. Although it was very easy to tweet, thinking about what to place in the updates to keep the interest of our DL followers made it more difficult for me. I haven't downloaded TweetDeck or anything to manage at this point in time, although I was able to pull the Twitter RSS feed directly into my Google Reader. I also like how it archives everything. Now I just go to one place to reference any type of campaigns we've done, etc. instead of trying to find the email that had the link.

I'm always looking for good Tweets to place up, so I'm looking forward to our discussions. The last I checked today, we had 46 followers. Not bad I think considering that I didn't follow everyone who followed me. I linked up to the news publications and several Hawaiian initiatives in hopes they'll keep updated with what happens in our arena.

Looking forward to everyone else's thoughts.
April 16, 2009 at 1:39 PM
Kelly D. said…
Aloha all,
I jumped (or should I say flew) in, too and created an account just to see what the hype is about. I haven't added any "tweets," but I am following our KSDL updates and a few others just to get an idea of what others post. I briefly looked at Magpie and thought that might be a way to use Twitter to help us with marketing. It's not free, but might be worth paying for. We'll look in to it more in our next Web Strategies meeting. I was thinking to be able to include "tweets" that others might be interested in, we could possibly say what's happening in some of our A`o Makua courses. Something like "Learning Hawaiian moon phases mele in A`o Makua Malama Aina course" or "Developing Hawaiian language memory game for next A`o Makua olelo Hawai`i class" tweets that can give people a more in depth glimpse at what we do. Just a thought . . .
Mahalo for posting, Christy!
April 20, 2009 at 2:17 PM
Komarey said…
I'm glad Christy did her owau on Twitter. I've been really resistant to creating an account as it's just one more thing to keep up with. After watching the video, I can see how easy it is to just keep up. I do, however see how using it in combination with magpie could be very beneficial as it targets keywords in tweets. Like Kelly D. mentioned, it does cost, but that amount can be set per day. The good thing is that it allows us to track through our tweets how our audience is responding. The challenge may be posting things that are engaging and eye catching to our target audience. We need to be able to sustain their attention. It would be neat if we could think of some ideas like the ones Kelly mentioned to keep them checking and participating.

Thanks for sharing. Hopefully this will be a great way to bring in more of our target audience. I think by linking up with other organizations will also help us increase our following.
April 20, 2009 at 3:45 PM
Clinton said…
Mahalo for posting on this trendy topic. Amazing how many people are using this, from the kid next door to CNN. But the big question is how to effectively harness the power of this social network and turn tweets into measurable results. I'm thinking we will need to build up the followers and get them coming back for more or better yet our web site. Maybe we can do "give away" tweets? I also looked at Magpie to see what that does and it is an interesting concept. The only thing I would worry about besides cost is if it starts turning people off, just like those text message advertisements on your cell phone. Thanks for sharing.
April 20, 2009 at 7:29 PM
Anonymous said…
Thanks Christy for twisting my arm into joining Twitter. ;) Like Komarey, I had been resisting the trend thinking it's one more thing that i have to keep up with regularly...and seeing as how I have trouble keeping up with email on most days, I wasn't looking to add one more thing to the list. However, it is interesting to see how it's used and it can be incorporated by our team. I also enjoyed the resources that Brent selected & you posted. It was nice to see how Twitter was used in an educational setting, because all I could picture was myself sending out "____ is due today", "dont' forget your project", and thinking that my students would quickly turn of their TweetDecks or remove me as one of their followees. :) Anyway, I still need more time to find good tweeters to follow to see how it can best be used. Overall the idea is growing on me & I think it's a good way to push out updates for our programs & is much more timely than our newsletter updates.

One last comment, I think Clinton's idea of doing giveaway tweets is a good one. Send out a "register for A`o Makua in the next hour & get 5 bucks off your next course" or something like that might be a good incentive.
April 21, 2009 at 10:44 AM
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