Using Twitter to Achieve Tech Comm Fame and Fortune

Peggy Harvey

STC Carolina Chapter

My History with Social Media Avoided it like the plague Started a personal blog in June, 2009 Took the class “Social Media in Public

Relations” in Fall, 2009 Now use Twitter and have a personal-

professional bloghttp://connectingtocontent.com/

Still won’t touch Facebook

Getting Started with Twitter Go to http://twitter.com and sign up Build your Twitter community

Follow people you know See who they’re following and follow them

Getting Involved with the Community Followed RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez) Participated in his eSeminar Twitter 101 for

Technical Communicators http://rjacquez.com/twitter_for_technical_communic/

Asked RJ a question about screenshots

Getting Involved (continued) Tweeted about a presentation I did for class

that talked about Adobe Community Help RJ commented on and retweeted my tweets Got to know RJ through Twitter

RJ asked me to do an interview on Adobe Community Help for his blog

For a while the interview was Google’s #2 search result on my namehttp://rjacquez.com/interview-with-peggy-harvey-the-future-of-documentation-adobe-community-help/

Twitter and the STC Summit Twitter reigned at the 2010 STC Summit in

Dallas Tweeting during sessions Twitter was used to connect with people on-site A large screen displayed all tweets on the #stc10

hastag Found out I won an iPad from WebWorks via

Twitter

Twitter Tips

Do: Create a short username

Good: @arh (Alan Houser) Bad: @PMJaniszewski (Peter Janiszewski)

Include a profile picture and bio Listen before you jump in

Learn the terminology: @, DM, RT, URL shortening, etc. Jump in! Be courteous Be patient Use Twitter as part of a broader networking

strategy

Twitter Tips (continued)

Don’t Make Twitter a monologue Block your tweets Use profanity Put down your employer Tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on

the front page of a newspaper Tweet useless information (unless that’s the

image you want to portray)

Tweetdeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/