In What Ways Can Journalists Improve Their Twitter Skills?

There’s no question about it: Many journalists get a lot out of Twitter and consider it the most effective way to reach their respective audiences. Twitter has about 330 million monthly active users (MAU), according to its last reported data that leveraged this metric in Q1 of 2019. That means journalists can have a lot of leverage on the social media platform and, in fact, they do.

The data backs this up: According to Muckrack’s 2021 State of Journalism report, “76% of journalists say Twitter is the most valuable social network to them.” This makes Twitter an immensely valuable tool for news organizations whose journalists use the platform to source and share their news.

But gauging the steepness of Twitter’s learning curve can feel like an intimidating task for journalists who are still rather new to Twitter. Thankfully, there are several different ways that they can use Twitter effectively on a platform that’s played a significant role in how journalism has and will continue to evolve.

Some valuable tips and tricks are included below.

LEARN HOW TO USE TWITTER’S REVERSE SEARCH FUNCTION

Many Twitter users like to tag journalists whose work they share. However, many, many others don’t. What to do? This is where Twitter’s reverse search function can come in handy. All you have to do is post your URL in the search bar and hit return and you’ll find every time that specific URL appears on Twitter, whether or not it’s been shortened.

CATCH UP ON WHAT YOU’VE MISSED WITH TWITTER MOMENTS

Twitter Moments allow you to curate stories that are happening worldwide using a variety of different sources on the social media platform. Journalists can use them to share responses to stories they’ve worked on and can pull content from other users, journalists or not, to offer followers a more complete picture of a given story. Twitter Moments can help journalists consider the narrative of the story they’re trying to tell, so the order of the tweets matters. An enticing headline and cover image helps if you’re trying to engage audiences.

LEARN HOW TO USE TWEETDECK

Twitter has described Tweetdeck as “your personal browser for staying in touch with what's happening now.”

“Tweetdeck consists of a series of customisable columns which can be set up to display the user's Twitter timeline, mentions, direct messages, lists, trends, favourites, search results, hashtags, or all tweets by or to a single user,” says journalist Rahaman Abiola, who notes that the feature allows journalists to “monitor multiple accounts simultaneously.”

Tweetdeck gives journalists and media outlets the ability to monitor their competitors, not to mention government agencies and other organizations that use the platform to drop press releases.

LEARN HOW TO SEARCH TWEETS BY LOCATION

Twitter can help you filter Tweets by location and all you need to do is find and include the latitude and longitude of a location (which can easily be done online). Once you have that information, you can easily filter by distance from that location. That’s a powerful tool to have in your arsenal, especially when a story breaks or when you’re trying to find a more local response to a certain event.

TWITTER THREADS ARE YOUR FRIEND

Twitter threads help journalists break down complex stories for their audience as they develop. They’re quite valuable if you’re trying to break down details and tell a bigger story over longer time spans.

Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon, points out that journalists benefit when they use a more “deliberative” approach to Twitter threads.

“By keeping your thread visually appealing, you should seek to use the full spectrum of creative tools at your disposal. Use images, charts, GIFs, memes, videos, etc. as well as quotes/paraphrasing, of varying lengths,” he says. “Be sure to link to other people tweeting about this topic, by tagging relevant people and places (by @theirusername) to encourage retweets. This includes other journalists and official sources.”

Radcliffe notes that being more intentional with link sharing and numbering longer tweets within a thread (which is very helpful for Twitter users who find or follow your content out of sequence) is also important and can go along way to improve the relationship journalists have with Twitter.

UNDERSTAND HOW TWITTER LISTS WORK

Twitter Lists are curated selections of Twitter accounts. In helping you create and organize your content, they make it much easier for Twitter followers and users to find what you’ve posted. Twitter lists can be organized around a particular topic, location or organization.

“You can then add or remove more people from the list over time, and review it whenever you want to see what people on that list have shared on Twitter,” says Radcliffe, who adds that “Lists are super handy if you want to duck into a topic on an occasional basis, without necessarily following all of these users all of the time.”