Lesson 2: Getting started on Twitter - a guide for student journalists

Every student journalist must get to grips with Twitter. You’ll need to understand how to use it for newsgathering, plus you need to cultivate your own audience and personal profile as you launch your own career.

Job ads sometimes ask for your handle and you can expect recruiters to scan your feed.

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When I met my City University journalism students for the first time last week and asked how they felt about using Twitter, a couple of the comments were:

  • I don’t have time to check Twitter
  • I hardly have any followers so feel like I’m tweeting into a void

Other concerns maybe:

  • I don’t have anything original / smart / funny to say
  • I fear getting into debates
  • I don’t know what to tweet about

With those points in mind, here are some tips to get you started on Twitter.

1. You don’t have to give your opinion

A journalist’s job is to report impartially. You don’t need to worry about being smart, funny or enter heated debates.

Start by sharing the stories you find interesting

  • You can start by simply tweeting the headline to the story
  • You can retweet a news story you find interesting

Better still you can:

  • Summarise the article in your own words
  • Share an interesting fact or stat from the story
  • Share a quote that you find interesting

For example:

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And remember, attribute facts and cite sources.

When one student asked ‘how many times should I tweet?’ I suggested aiming to tweet three times a day.

2. Pick a beat or beats

Not sure what to tweet about? One topic that student journalists should be interested in is digital journalism. Follow sources of news on digital journalism (see point 3) and share stories by tweeting quotes or key facts.

Aside from that, what else are you interested in? Sport? Fashion? Pop culture? Politics? Think about the thing you want to read about every day and start sharing articles related to that topic.

But how do I find that news?

3. Follow interesting people

Here are a few accounts to follow for news on the news industry.

And here is a journalism student starter list on who to follow on Twitter. This list may be a little out of date as I compiled it a couple of years ago. 

4. Write your bio

As a trainee journalist you need to think about how you present yourself. Ideally you will have a headshot photo and a bio that explains who you are. You might want to include the @interhacktives or @cityournalism handles. This will mean your profile will show in search results of others are looking for City students.

You can use FollowerWonk to search bios and see how other students present themselves.

5. Set up notifications

You need to set up alerts on your phone so that you will see when someone mentions you, RTs or follows you. This will mean that you don’t miss messages and you can see when others are engaging with you (below left). 

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You might want to set up alerts so you can see every tweet from a particular account. For example, I recommend you do this with @BBCBreaking (above right).

6. Start engaging

Now you have found interesting people to follow, it’s time to start engaging. You can simply lurk and ‘like’ a few tweets. This shows that you are listening and gets your name out there.

You should also:

  • Respond when people mention you
  • Like tweets in which you are mentioned

When you tweet a journalist’s story you may include his or her @handle. Again, that helps you start to make connections.

7. Tweet from live events

One of the Interactive Journalism students asked how to grow follower numbers, particularly if you are starting from a small base. You can follow other journalism students and City and beyond. Here’s a list of this year’s Interactive Journalism MA students and there are lists of previous students here and here and here. Follow a few folk from those lists and see who follows back.

One of the best ways of gaining followers is to tweet from a live event. This may be a journalism-related event with a hashtag (like #hhldn for Hacks/Hackers London which I co-run). Tweeting from an event where others are following the hashtag or jumping on a trending topic with a hashtag should ensure you pick up followers.

8. Look at your data

Twitter analytics allows you to track engagements. Don’t simply measure your success by follower count, look at mentions and other engagements.

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9. Understand some basics

Know that in 2017, Twitter made the decision expand its character limit from 140 to 280.

Know that in 2015, Twitter launched RT with a comment.

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Here’s a pro tip for you, if you want to add bullet points to a tweet, you can do so by using the alt + 8 shortcut (on a Mac).

Use threads

Twitter officially launched threads in 2017. Users had been threading tweets before then by replying to their own tweets. There’s now a + button allowing you to create a thread when 280 characters isn’t long enough.

Here are three examples from the past 10 days:

Now you have these tips, create a strategy for your own Twitter use. How many times will you aim to tweet? What will your approach be? What will your beat or beats be?  

I’m a guest lecturer on the Interactive Journalism MA at City University London.

Tags: Twitter journalism city university of london interhacktives