Using Twitter as a professional platform.

Twitter is not the most intuitive social media platform out there for beginners. There's a learning curve unlike other platforms where you can easily post and learn quickly. It's filled with many communities for connecting with people from overseas and sharing information in bitesize tweets unless it's a thread. It's become a great platform to get information updated quickly with breaking news and what is trending either worldwide or in a specific location.

I'm no stranger to Twitter as I’m part of Gen Z being a consumer of digital media for majority of my life. I understand how it works from my own personal use being part of the twitter community since 2017.

I've never thought of using Twitter for professional use other than a platform for promotion of my published written work on various platforms. I didn’t take that step to creating an account as I had no proper game plan for using it. I would’ve only used it to tweet out my links which would in turn make it a bland bot that shares written pieces.

Following that notion, it's not a widely used social media platform in Australia. Facebook is still widely used in Australia unlike other social media sites. This follows the fact that whenever TV shows air, the hashtag is not used much unless it’s a reality show where many people live-tweet whilst watching. I don’t know of many friends who have a twitter account but it’s a great platform to connect with people. The people that I have met use it for a leisurely purpose to interact with fandoms and to share their love for pop culture, bands, musicians and many other communities.

Twitter can be perceived as an informal platform with interaction of communities using hashtags, threads, retweets and people using it to rant. It’s a versatile platform that has many uses where you have world leaders and local ministers on the platform to spread awareness and post statements to events and holidays. Although, I am not a fan when they post thoughts and prayers as it’s lack of action the but I digress. There are many examples of people who work within the digital media and creative field using it for work. They use it to share links and photos of their creations whether it be written, drawn or a visual. This can create hype and a following for people who are preparing to launch a large project.

It wasn’t until I enrolled into a subject at university as my final elective. Making Social Media is the subject where we can use different mediums on the basis of “Learning by Doing”. It is what the notion is, learning by practically using it which is using social media.

That was the short origin story of how my professional twitter account became live and the beginning of future networking through said account. It is another online persona where I will connect with people on a professional level unlike my own personal account. As mentioned in my unit, it's an extension of who I am as a person because I don't plan to be straight up a robot. I want to be relatable with and be human, that's what most people want out of reading someone's content and to be able to connect with that information.

I started by establishing my presence by linking my about.me page filled with many links and a small bio about myself. It’s taking small steps of interacting with posts and tweeting my own content to create a following as it is for any social media platform. There's a dedicated hashtag for interaction with the unit chair, tutors and peers who are taking the subject. I've started to interact with peers and hoping that I can continue to expand my presence on twitter. I haven't tweeted much because of the nature of the account with the intention to use for university, but I do plan to promote my writing on Twitter to get some traction and attempt to network with writers. I do plan to curate some of my writing pieces from Medium and Vocal to a WordPress to make it easier for people to find my work. I have many plans for expanding my network through using Twitter and to self-promote my work.

It's a work in progress now but with the current situation, digital media is here to make our lives easier by connecting with people by sharing our thoughts on any platform. This comes with great responsibility with using the platform for the right reasons because we are representing ourselves.

I will do a some follow up piece to share my experience of twitter and gather up evidence to prove the point of using twitter for professional reasons.