As Twitter has grown over the years, there are multiple functions you can use in order to optimise your experience.
Pin tweets
Pinning tweets enables you to permanently place one of your tweets to the top of your profile so that it gives other users a taste of your personality as a teacher. Choose a tweet of yours that is popular, represents you as a teacher and one that you are particularly proud of.
Simply click the three dots and choose the option ‘Pin Tweet’. You can always change and update the tweets you want to pin.
Bookmarking tweets
Similar to liking tweets, bookmarking allows you to save a tweet and can only be seen by you. It is completely personal and the author of that tweet will not know you have saved it. Click the arrow pointing upwards at the bottom of the tweet and select ‘Add Tweet to Bookmarks’. This is a great function for when you don’t have time to engage with a tweet and want to have a closer look at a later time.
Tweet notifications
When you start following an account, you can choose to receive notifications every time they tweet. It’s a great new feature which allows you to always stay connected with a person or organisation, and so that you never miss any of their content. This would be particularly useful to use for your school and close friends and colleagues, so that you’re always up to date with their posts.
This also means you can have notifications from news accounts so that you never miss a breaking news alert. This is more suited to the Twitter app on your phone. When you visit someone’s profile, you will see a button with a bell, which will provide you with notification options.
Blocking accounts and muting
If you do encounter accounts which are harmful in any way, pose a threat to your safety, or you just want to see less of their tweets you can block, report or mute their account. You can do this by clicking the three dots on their profile and choose the option to block or mute their account.
Muting the account will prevent you from seeing their tweets come up on your feed but you can still their tweets if you visit their profile.
Blocking an account means you will no longer be able to able to view their tweets or engage with that account. If another user is abusive towards you in any way, you can also report their account and inform Twitter about their actions.
There is also the option to mute specific words appearing on your Twitter feed. Let’s say for example you do not want to see tweets mentioning someone’s name or a topic. You can do this by clicking on ‘Settings and Privacy’ then ‘Privacy and Safety’ and then ‘Mute and block’. Here you can manage blocked accounts, muted words and notifications.
To mute a word or phrase, click ‘Muted words’ and then click the blue plus sign. Here you can add words and hashtags you want to mute and can choose options such as timings and where you want them to be muted.
Direct messaging
A popular feature on Twitter is the messages feature. This would be a great way to communicate with students, colleagues and friends in a private and confidential way. It gives you the chance to chat with people informally and discuss matters in depth.
You can also make group chats, so if you wanted to make a group chat with your students over a piece of work. This would be the best place to share conversations.
Analytics
Another new feature on Twitter is the analytics feature, which allows you to see how your tweet has performed with users. On your tweet you will see a button with three lines. When you click, it will tell you information such as users’ engagement, impressions, media engagements, link clicks and retweets and likes.
It’s a handy way to see which content works and does not work with your followers. Look at your tweets and find out which tweets gain the most impressions, so that you know what to include and what type of content you should be focusing on.
Changing your display
If you get bored of the default colours on Twitter, you have the option to change the colours of your links, font size and background. Online, click the three dots on your home page and change your display.
On the app, go to settings and then click ‘display and sound’. Depending on your needs, Twitter has the functions to suit your needs.