My Twitter Story: Why I’m So Passionate About Twitter
My Twitter story goes way back to when I had five children ages, one to 11, and I thought that their story should be shared. I entered a writing contest and I won first place and received free registration for a writing conference. So, I flew to Ontario from Alberta, not knowing anyone, and walked in feeling like a total fraud because I didn’t have anything published. Yet I thought, if I won this contest, maybe I am a writer and perhaps I do need to use my abilities to share messages with other people. But how am I going to fit writing into my busy schedule when I have five young children and I’m busy being a mom? One of the authors at the conference empathized with me, and said, “Ruth, why don’t you use Twitter as your mini-blog?”
3 Lessons Twitter Taught Me
I wasn’t that familiar with Twitter. It was 2009, and Twitter was new. You were only allowed 144 characters per tweet, but I decided to take her challenge, which did several things for me:
- Twitter taught me how to communicate succinctly and well because I had to be intentional about how I communicated through those 144 characters.
- Twitter also helped me to be consistent. I could tweet every day and also build my content and practice writing and get my message out there.
- Tweeting showed me the power of Twitter.
Using Twitter for Political Advocacy
At that time, I was working on our local school board as a trustee, and we were advocating for two new schools in Lac La Biche. We used all the usual processes required of school board trustees. People came in and assessed the facilities we wanted to replace. We also put the project on our capital plan for several years. Finally, we discussed the projects with our local MLA. We were very happy to hear our schools were approved. However, we were also told, “You know, finances are tight right now. And so yes, we have approved your projects, but we are not going to be able to build the schools the size you’ve requested. They’re going to have to be scaled back a bit.”
Our superintendent and other staff members did everything they could. We continued to advocate with our MLA. And one day our superintendent came to a board meeting and told us, “I don’t know what else to do. The project’s at standstill.” So, we talked around the board table, and I asked, “Is it okay if I put out some tweets?” After some discussion, we agreed that there was really nothing else that we knew to do, and I was given permission to send out those tweets.
By this time, I had learned that certain hashtags received attention from particular people. I used the hashtags #ableg for Alberta legislature and #abed for Alberta education were two hashtags I used in my tweets. I was very careful how I worded those tweets. I wanted to catch attention, but I wanted to do it in a way that was not disrespectful but was saying, “Hey, this is what you promised. This is what we’re being told we can have. And there’s a big difference. So what can we do to solve that problem?” As far as we know nothing else changed, but the next morning someone from Alberta Education called our superintendent. In due time we built two new schools (the size we originally requested) in Lac La Biche. At that point, I was hooked. I realized if you use Twitter correctly, it can be very powerful.
Using Twitter to Reach my Readers
The second time I realized Twitter could be powerful was when I wrote my book called Learn Twitter. People saw that I knew how to use Twitter and they didn’t understand how it worked. They started asking me to write a book to show them how they could use Twitter effectively. That book came out and I was able to get that book into the hands of a couple of thousand people quickly. Twitter helped make that happen. I strongly recommend authors, entrepreneurs, and business people who want to get their message out, use Twitter.
Ready to Learn How to Use Twitter?
If you would like to learn to use Twitter and Twitter Spaces, join my FREE Facebook Challenge January 10-14, 2022
-Learn 3 mistakes that will chase your Twitter audience away
-Learn 3 tips to build trust and connections as a Twitter Spaces Host
-Learn about 3 tools that will enable you to save time
Registration Link: https://www.getclientsbuildcommunity.com/twitter-spaces3yhd6ec6
