Pinterest
Good Morning Everyone! I hope you're enjoying your weekend. I have noticed that a lot more people tend to like to read and catch up then. I've been thinking a lot about the social medias and how we can use them for our family history. I want to give you some information on some of them and their unique features and options. My first post on Facebook was about Facebook itself. You can find an enhanced version of that post on our blog found at:
This week I have been focusing on Twitter. Have you ever heard someone discount Twitter because they don't care what someone else had for lunch that day? That probably came from Twitter being limited to 140 characters (including spaces) and what can you possibly say of importance within that limited space.
When I started tweeting for the Family History Guide (The FH Guide) it was tricky to get a message and your hashtags and tweets in that allotted space, but it definitely can be done with practice. Twitter is all about brevity but you can add links. However, and this is big, Twitter has just this month lengthened the character allowance to 280 characters. Double the space worldwide!
The purpose of Twitter is to share information, connect like-minded people to their target groups and to have conversations within those communities. So for us as genealogists and family historians it is all about learning and teaching, social engagement, and target groups.
Many high profile individuals in the genealogy community have Twitter accounts that you can follow to learn and ask individual questions. As an example, Ron Tanner of FamilySearch/Family Tree has an hour long, live Q&A every week on his Twitter page. You can send in a question during that time and he will answer it on the spot.
#Hashtags are used to identify target groups or companies like #familysearch #ancestry #myheritage #findmypast #genealogy #familyhistory.
You can search for the #hashtags or people or companies (the fh guide) in the search bar and all the tweets will be filtered with those labels/tags.
The underling purpose about all social media is engagement with other people. If we just read and don't engage we are only getting half of the benefit. With the click of a mouse we can like, comment or share with others.
To me this is a nice way to show that we support and thank someone for giving us something that can be of help to us in our individual pursuits. Twitter allows us to like, comment and retweet anything we wish on the platform.
To find out more about Twitter we can Google it or YouTube it to get an overview video tutorial. Two of the things I like about Twitter are meeting new people in our field of interest and sharing about the fantastic aspects of The Family History Guide. Check it out it may perfect for you!
