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Home Posts tagged "Twitter"

Livening up your Tweets with multimedia (Probation Wednesday #9)

Published on 16 May 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

As I have said before many times in this series, the best way to build a Twitter following is to tweet about interesting things in an interesting way. One of the ways of livening up your tweets and adding variety is by the use of multi-media – or, more simply, putting pictures or video in your tweets. This has always been possible on Twitter but has become much more attractive since the last Twitter upgrade which means that the image or clip is available directly from within your tweet. Your followers can click on the thumbnail and see the attachment without leaving Twitter, where previously you had to open another window to see the Twitpic or similar. Here’s a recent example. @SirIanBlair made a video in advance of last week’s police rally against the cuts:   @russwebt youtu.be/f-k0mpd3sdY #antiwinsornetwork needs

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Should the police search out crimes on social media?

Published on 15 May 2012 by in Social Media Innovation

There was an interesting article in Saturday’s Guardian which explored the issue of whether the police should get involved in cases of abuse on Twitter. This whole issue has received a lot of attention and discussion in the wake of the case of Liam Stacey who was jailed for 56 days after he posted racist tweets about Fabrice Muamba, following the footballer’s collapse from heart failure at Bolton’s Premier league game against Tottenham. @CC_StuartHyde and @DCCTayside were both quoted and put forward what was, for me, a very reasonable case that the police should not invest resources in monitoring social networking sites with two exceptions: In the case of pursuing investigations into ”real world” crimes To target proactively individuals involved in the sexual grooming of children The police officers agreed with @_millymoo, a legal Tweeter, Blogger and newspaper columnist, that there was no need

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Get organised on Twitter (Probation Wednesday #8)

Published on 9 May 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

It’s raining tweets Once you’ve been on Twitter for a few months and are following a few hundred people (and, I hope, have a few hundred people following you), most people feel the need to get organised. During peak times in working hours, the tweets rain down my timeline at the rate of about one every five seconds. How can I possibly keep up with all these nuggets of wit and wisdom, read all the links to the latest development in the worlds of crime, drug treatment (and social media)? Well of course I can’t, nor do I try to. I quite often work from home, sat in front of a computer all day. But even I can’t afford more than half an hour a day on social media. So how can you make effective use of Twitter and make

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Build a Twitter following (Probation Wednesday #7)

Published on 2 May 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

“If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”   This famous philosophical conundrum can be applied to tweeting too. There is limited point in crafting a series of pithy, intriguing tweets if you have only a few dozen followers to read and share them. This series of posts has followed a logical structure starting with getting your Twitter name, bio picture and profile right, and going on to advice about best tweeting and re-tweeting practice. However, it would have been just as useful to have started with this post first. As soon as you set up a Twitter account, you want to start building your following. The main point of tweeting as a police or probation officer (or for anyone else for that matter) is to get your message out there. It

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How often should I tweet? (Probation Wednesday #6)

Published on 25 April 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

How long is a piece of string? How often you tweet is very much a matter for you and what you are trying to achieve by tweeting. If you are a corporate tweeter – i.e. all your tweets are with your work hat on and you are linking to a lot of case studies, press releases etc., then you need to find a happy balance. Especially when you start, if you don’t tweet fairly regularly, it’s unlikely that you will develop much of a following. On the other hand, if you just blast out a never-ending series of “Aren’t we a wonderful police/probation service” tweets, people will soon stop following you. As always, the most important rule is to make sure your tweets are interesting. Corporate tweeters need to find a balance between publicising new initiatives and engaging with your

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The fine art of the Re-Tweet

Published on 18 April 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

Re-tweeting is just a matter of hovering over a Tweet and clicking the re-tweet symbol. So why does it need a whole article for itself? Well, re-tweeting is as important as tweeting itself; many of us re-tweet much more often than we Tweet. Why re-tweet? Personally, for every Tweet I make, I re-tweet 13 times as this graph of my last 3,600 Tweets from twtrland shows: There are three main reasons for re-tweeting: One of the main pleasures of being on Twitter is to explore and interact with other people. We probably wouldn’t be on Twitter if we didn’t find enough interesting people to follow whose tweets we wanted to share.Indeed, there are lots of probation staff in particular who thoroughly enjoy keeping up with debates about emerging practice, desistance theory (for which follow @fergus_mcneill) etc. on Twitter whilst rarely

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How to be a good Tweeter

Published on 11 April 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

What makes a good Tweet? There’s no single answer to this question of course. A good Tweet is like a good book or a good film – different people like different ones. Nevertheless, The Artist is considered by most people to be superior to Wrath of the Titans 3D. Most people find that the experience of reading Great Expectations enriches them more than First Among Equals. In the same way, there is an emerging consensus about what makes a good Tweet and, more importantly, a good Tweeter. The evidence It’s a sure sign that social media has entered the mainstream when it becomes the subject of “proper” research. Three researchers recently designed a site called Who gives a Tweet? which they used to get almost 1500 people to rate over 40,000 from over 20,000 Twitter accounts. You can find a full account

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Raising your profile: Probation Wednesday (3)

Published on 4 April 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

Your Twitter profile is perhaps the single most important component of your tweeting presence. Your Twitter name helps identify you. Your profile picture establishes your individuality and helps you stand out in the timeline. Your profile tells people why you are on Twitter and gives the biggest clue as to whether you are worth following. It also determines whether you will show up in search results. So what should you put in it? One hundred and sixty Twitter knows your profile is important and allows you 160 characters, an extra 20 on top of the traditional 140, to get it right. Whenever someone follow me on Twitter, I look at their profile to see if I should follow them back. My default position is always to follow someone back unless they are a business looking to sell me something (or

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A picture’s worth a thousand tweets

Published on 28 March 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

Welcome to the second in my series of posts helping probation trusts (and other organisations) get the most out of Twitter. Last week I discussed choosing your Twitter name, this week focuses on choosing your Twitter profile picture. Again, you might think this is not worth spending much time on. But when anyone is scrolling through a Twitter timeline of hundreds of Tweets, you want people looking for your tweets to be able to find them easily. The simplest way to make your Twitter account stand out is with a distinctive individual image. No Eggs please, we’re British Which brings me to my first rule. No eggs. I know it’s Easter, but no eggs on Twitter. What’s an egg? This is a Twitter egg, available in a range of colours: The best Twitter accounts, the ones that attract the most

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Probation Wednesday #1: A rose by any other name…

Published on 21 March 2012 by in Probation Wednesday

Welcome to the first in a series of short posts about how probation trusts can make the most out of Twitter. I’ve been running training days for Probation Trusts on a strategic approach to social media for a few months now and thought it would be useful to share some practice tips in a short post once a week. There are now over a hundred individuals tweeting professionally as representatives of 19 probation trusts and the probation presence on Twitter has grown substantially over the last six months. I decided on a weekly series since even busy probation staff can find 5 minutes free once per week. It was then just a matter of choosing a day of the week. I didn’t want to clash with #FollowFriday and even though: “Wednesday’s child is full of woe” I opted for the middle of

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#researchmethods: Using social media for social research

Published on 12 September 2011 by in Digital Engagement, Social Media Innovation

I recently evaluated a pilot project which used online surveys to get local peoples’ views on policing priorities (A virtual approach can mean real engagement). As part of the evaluation, I utilised web-based survey software to gather the views of participants. It was quick and easy to use and succeeded in getting a very high response rate. This got me thinking about other ways of using social media in social research. I was inspired by the new Fixmytransport website which aims to identify common meltdown points in Britain’s public transport system and lobby to get things changed. Developed under the aegis of Mysociety, responsible for a great range of resources including the simplest way to make a freedom of information request (Whatdotheyknow?), members of the public are encouraged to report public transport problems online and find people responsible so that

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Police and social media: The rise of the twoppers

Published on 19 September 2011 by in Digital Engagement

There has been endless media coverage on the use of social networks in the recent riots. A more considered debate is now emerging and the call for emergency powers to close down social media in times of unrest has been pretty much put to bed. However, there remains an abiding impression that looters used Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messaging to outflank the police, who were at a loss how to respond. However, many police services have been working on digital engagement for some time now and several actively used Twitter and other online approaches during the riots. A number of police services are starting to use Twitter to communicate with their local communities and give a much clearer idea of the work that they do. In addition to the very well-publicised Greater Manchester Police Twitter Day, there are a number

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Defending the faith: probation trusts and the effective use of social media

Published on 13 December 2011 by in Digital Engagement

All through human history and across different cultures, some of the most persistent stories concern the triumph of the under-dog; David against Goliath (one of the most popular tales of both the Bible and the Qur’an), the 300 Spartans facing the might of Xerxes’ army at Thermopylae, through to the  Seven Samurai and Magnificent Seven defending their villages from warlords and bandits. Probation trusts see themselves pretty much as underdogs at the moment, needing to defend themselves against much larger, more powerful foes. No-one knows to what extent the work of the probation service will be put out to tender, but the first competition for community payback is underway and there are plans to outsource “approved premises”, as probation hostels are known, and domestic violence work. The joint Ministry of Justice/NOMS review of the probation service promised (but unlikely to be delivered) before

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What does the probation service actually do?

Published on 26 September 2011 by in Digital Engagement

Next month sees the broadcast of a new three-part drama on BBC1. Public Enemies, written by Tony Marchant, features the story of 28 year old Eddie (Daniel Mays) who is released from prison after serving ten years for murder. He attempts to settle back into his old community – a community that doesn’t want him. One of the few people he can talk to is his probation officer, Paula (Anna Friel), a woman who’s only recently come back to work after a suspension: one of her offenders murdered again while under her supervision. Perhaps the most unusual thing about this new show is that it features a probation officer in a leading role. There are thousands of movies and TV shows centred on the criminal justice system. In recent years the focus has broadened beyond police officers and defence lawyers

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© Russell Webster 2011/12