Hooking up with Twitter  

• Why Twitter?
• Set-Up
• Strategy

WHY TWITTER?

Love it or loath it, Twitter is an effective communications tool. 

Hooking up with Twitter is entirely optional.   Anything you make public within Gleanr is already indexed by search engines and therefore makes you more generally discoverable (other people will find you when they find the content you make public within your Gleanr channels).  Think of Twitter as an amplifier - a convenient way for people to find and follow you with respect to your specific interests.  With Gleanr you can also use Twitter to automatically update your Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, accounts, so you don't have to spend so much time there.

SET-UP

Twitter accounts are free - you'll need to create an account there if you haven't already.

Use these links for more information on using the hash tags #fb and #li to automate connections with Facebook and LinkedIn.

STRATEGY

Once you attach your Twitter account to a channel, it is fully tweet-enabled.  Here's what that means:

• anything you glean publicly in that channel will automatically be tweeted on your Twitter account together with a custom Gleanr "short URL" that will automatically bring people who are interested in this content directly back to your glean, and you.

• anything you glean privately within that channel will remain private - it will not be tweeted.

• when someone who you have invited to be a member of your channel gleans publicly into your channel, this content will also automatically be tweeted on your Twitter account (this is a great way for a group of people to collectively amplify the value of a single channel, but obviously you want to be careful in who you invite to be members of your tweet-enabled channels).

• if you are a member of somebody else's tweet-enabled channel, you can also add your own Twitter account to this channel (click on this channel in "Home" and select "View" to find "Add Myself to Broadcast List" there).   This means that public gleans here will be tweeted twice, which is a way of serving people who may be following you or this channel at the same time, making both entities more discoverable.