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Alice Keeler

Tweet Stuff Template: A tutorial

Tweet Stuff Template: A tutorial

This morning Kristin Gregory tweeted out that she was trying my “Tweet Stuff” template. In response to some requests, I thought I would make some directions on how to use it.

CLICK HERE for the template.

The gist of the spreadsheet is it creates a link for you to tweet out things. Click on the link and it launches a tweet. The are several reasons you may want to do this.

  1. Plan out your tweets. Instead of tweeting on the fly and possibly embarrassing yourself, plan out some clever things you want to say. Have someone check them before you tweet them out. (Clearly I do not do this, but if you wanted to it can be handy.)
  2. Plan out the questions for a twitter chat.
  3. Encourage people to tweet. Twitter is a slow burn, if people are not interacting with you you may not realize the value in Twitter and give up. After convincing an educator that Twitter is the way to go it wouldn’t be a bad idea to plan out some tweets to encourage the person to become engaged. Periodically tweeting out to them a question or word of encouragement. If you had a list of people you’re trying to encourage in the spreadsheet and a list of things that you could tweet at them it could remind you to make sure you tweet at those individuals.
  4. I saw someone have their students plan out what it would look like if the play MacBeth was done in tweets. Students could use this template to create something like that. Writing out the dialogue of the story.
  5. If you are using Twitter with your class, you may have some discussion questions you want to pre-plan. Not only will this be helpful for leading a twitter chat in class, but you will have the questions ready to tweet for next year’s lesson.

Those are just a few reasons, share your ideas in the comments!

Step 1

Make a copy of the template.

Step 2

Each line creates ONE tweet. In columns C, D, E and F you can write what you want in the tweet. These 4 cells will be merged together, so the total number of characters in all 4 cells can not exceed 140 characters.

It is unlikely you need to write anything into columns D, E or F, but the option is there if you are listing things out.

Step 3

Who do you want to include in your tweet? Did you know if you start a tweet with the @ symbol that the tweet only appears in the Twitter feed of people who follow BOTH of you? For this reason you probably want to put your Twitter mentions at the END or MIDDLE of the tweet. This template places the Twitter handle at the END.

Do NOT include the @ symbol. This is automatically added for you.

You can have up to 6 people mentioned in the tweet. Type their twitter handles, one into each cell, in columns G, H, I, J, K, and L.

Step 4

Hashtags are a way to tag or label the tweet. If you’re tweeting about math try using the #mathed or #mathchat hashtag. If you want to find California educators try #CAedchat. Here is a list of educational hashtags: Click Here

Column M and N allow you to enter up to 2 hashtags.

Do NOT include the # symbol, this will be automatically added for you.

Remember that the number of characters in the person’s Twitter handle as well as the number of characters in the hashtag count as part of the 140 characters.

Step 5

Back in column B is a blue hyperlink that will generate the link. Click on the link. Below the link a pop up window appears that will require you click on the link again. This will launch the tweet.

The spreadsheet is in editing mode, optionally you can publish a Google document and you would only have to click on the link once if you were in the published view.

 


Ideas Shared With Me

I’m collaborating with a group. This will make it easy to hit everybody at once.”

 


1 thought on “Tweet Stuff Template: A tutorial

  1. Well, I have to admit I was very skeptical that there would actually be uses for this tool, but I can see them now. I’ve got a group of Twitter friends that I am collaborating with, but I always have to go searching for a previous Tweet to reply to in order to hit them all. I can put them into this template and use it for future tweets to the group.

    AND, more than that, you actually gave me some ideas for using this in the classroom.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Lowell

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