Connecting with your audience is basically simple with Twitter. It’s easy to sign up and 
start tweeting, but if you get started be ready to listen and respond. This is something I’m working on to get better at on my @witt_nait twitter handle. WITT, the acronym for Women in Technology and Trades is an initiative at NAIT to connect and support female students in predominantly male programs.
Social media has been a big part of our strategy to connect with students, industry and the community. Twitter has been great for broadcasting our message, but as Li and Bernoff suggest in Groundswell I also need to listen and respond to our community and drive them to richer content like a blog (2011, p.201). I have 771 followers and have tweeted 1341 times.
I try to make sure I follow back anyone that follows WITT and energizing by responding to our followers and retweeting. I RT a lot, other organizations for women, events that are happening in #Yeg and job postings. The challenge is finding the time to listen, respond and embracing. WITT has a staff of one, me. My goal this year is to have the WITT community embrace with us and twitter can be used to drive them to the other social media platforms that WITT has: Facebook, LinkedIn Group and our webpage. If I have time I would like to blog regularly to provide some rich content for our students. The LinkedIn group is a good place to have the blog and we have 99 group members.
I couldn’t agree more with Li and @jbernoff that social media needs to be part of the job description (p.211). I’m currently tracking how much time I spend on social media for WITT and average an hour a day and I’m not providing rich content yet. I will be looking at some of the tools that were mentioned in Groundswell too, like TweetDeck so responding is easier. The Social Media course with @RayBilodeau I’m taking has provided me with a lot of information of what can be done with social media and after spending the weekend with my granddaughter Jaden who is 10, I can see that social media is here to stay! I have my work cut out for me, just need to find the time!
Diclusion 