Annyce Davis

ones and zeros

Tackling Twitter

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So one thing people ask me a lot is: “How do I use Twitter?” What they’re really trying to find out is “How to use Twitter to stay in the know and promote themselves on the Internet.” This is a great question. A few months ago I asked myself the same question and ended up reading countless blogs and a few books on the subject of self promotion. Thus I’ve decided to expound on my current strategy for Tackling Twitter in this post. So keep reading…

The Basics

What is Twitter? It’s a social network that lets you find out what’s going on in your area and around the world in topics that you care about. It’s based on short messages called “tweets” that are currently limited to 140 characters. The tweets are presented in reverse chronological order, for the most part. Below is a snapshot of my Twitter home page. It contains your primary timeline with tweets from all the people you follow, basic analytics, popular hashtags, and more!

Twitter Homepage

With the “what” covered, let’s discuss the “why”. Why should you as a developer care about your presence on Twitter? In a word: networking. To expand on that, I’d say that Twitter is the best way to meet people who are interested in and actively involved in the tech community. I personally have established virtual relationships with hundreds of people in the Android community. This has enabled me to get answers to my development questions, receive encouragement to tackle new coding challenges, as well as expand my career. It’s also a way that I can give back to the community by doing the same for others.

So maybe you want to see some more tangible benefits. Here’s a listing of several opportunities I’ve directly had through interactions on Twitter:

  • Invited to connect with O’Reilly for a video course deal
  • Invited to speak at conferences
  • Invited to speak at meetups
  • Invited to do podcast interviews
  • Invited to write a guest blog post
 
And there are probably more things that I just can’t recall at the moment. So yes, very useful for expanding your career!

#Hashtags

So one of the major things that you need to understand about Twitter is its use of hashtags. Hashtags are essentially just a way to label tweets. With all of the content that is produced on Twitter every second it would be impossible to find what you’re interested in without them.


You can use hashtags in various ways:

  • To search for additional tweets
  • Find new accounts to follow
  • Participate in Twitter chats
  • Follow along with live events


Twitter Hashtag

Filtering Content

Once you start following a couple hundred people you will notice that your homepage is just a random mix of information. So in order to read specific tweets on a given subject I tend to create Twitter lists for myself to help with organizing the content. Below is a screenshot of some of the Twitter lists that I belong to.

Twitter List

Creating a Twitter list is very simple (see gif below). You have the option to make your list public or private. If your list is public then others can see your list and follow it if they desire, also when you add people they will be notified that you have added them. However, if you create a private list then it’s just for you. 


I like to use private lists for when there’s a specific group of people that I want to follow what they tweet closely. So maybe you really want to speak at a conference, why not create a private list of the conference organizers. Then you can begin your campaign to become “known” to them and increase your chances of having an opportunity to speak.

Adding Someone to Your List

Establishing “Relationships”

Ok, so up until this point, you’re mostly just consuming content. Now let’s discuss how you can evolve your interactions on Twitter by establishing “relationships” with others. No one wants to be seen as a walking billboard, just constantly spewing information. By interacting with the people on your list, by doing things like favoriting tweets or retweeting, you get the attention of those in your “Twitterverse”. Over time they will begin to recognize you and may return a similar level of interaction with your tweets. So like many things in life, it just takes time and don’t get discouraged if you don’t start to see immediate results from your efforts on Twitter.

Crafting Your Tweets

Another thing people often lament to me is that they don’t know what to tweet about. There are so many great things to tweet about! If you do anything related to your industry, like attend conferences, read articles or create your own content, you can find something tweet-worthy. 

Automation

Once you start tweeting regularly and building up a following, you may want to begin to automate some of your efforts on Twitter. I prefer to segment chunks of my day to optimize my overall output, so it’s easier for me to curate my tweets in advance. For this I use Buffer, a tool that let’s you schedule tweets. They have very useful tutorials and helpful staff if you run into issues.

Just Remember

Be nice! The Internet is full of trolls and just extremely negative people, so why contribute to that? Instead you can use your newfound Twitter prowess to spread positivity in the tech community. I can’t wait to read your tweets!
Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter where I’ll share my top 3 tweet templates. Until next time…

Joining In on Twitter Chats

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A great way to connect with others in the tech community is by means of joining in on a Twitter Chat. So what’s a Twitter chat? 

“A tweet chat is a live Twitter event, usually moderated and focused around a general topic. To filter all the chatter on Twitter into a single conversation a hashtag is used. A set time is also established so that the moderator, guest or host is available to engage in the conversation.” — Forbes


Ok, so here’s the Twitter Chat basics: 

  1. Find out the start day and time (i.e. every Wednesday at 9pm EST)
  2. Use the chat’s hashtag in all tweets (i.e. #CodeNewbie)
  3. I use Tweetdeck to follow the conversation (just create a column with the desired hashtag)
  4. Wait for the Moderator to announce the question (i.e. Q1: What did you learn this week? #CodeNewbie)
  5. Respond with “A” and then the answer number (i.e. A1: I learned about JUnit Rules #CodeNewbie)
  6. Interact with other’s tweets that you find interesting (favorite, retweet, respond, etc.) 
TweetDeck


Some of the benefits: 

  • Meet people who are interested in a similar topic
  • Expand your network of tech professionals
  • Help encourage others who are just getting started
  • Learn new strategies for dealing with the unique challenges in the tech sector
  • And do it all from the comfort of your own computer 😉


Another benefit of participating in a Twitter chat is that often times the chat is captured via Storify and you can continue to have others engaging with you and your tweets long after the chat has ended.

What’s your favorite Twitter chat? Please share in the comments!

My 2015

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Looking back on 2015, I’d have to say it was my year of “breaking free”. I finally started to do many of things that I had been only dreaming of for the past several years in my career as a Software Developer. Instead of feeling like I still didn’t know enough, I embraced what I did know and used that to increase my visibility in the Android Community. So here’s a recap of some of the highlights.

Public Speaking

With some encouragement from fellow female developers I submitted my first conference proposal. And I’ve been speaking around the world ever since! Below is a recording of my first conference talk at Droidcon NYC.

 

Appearances

I’ve also had the opportunity to make a few appearances speaking about my passion for Android Development on the Android Dialogs YouTube channel and the CodeNewbie’s podcast. This was a lot of fun and pushed me to “go with flow” in an environment that wasn’t so scripted.

Teaching

I love to share my knowledge with others whether it’s through conference speaking, blog posts, one-on-one, etc. So I was able to try something completely different this year and that was creating my own video course, Developing High Quality Android Applications. This enabled me to learn a new form of engagement through video and I hope to continue to explore this medium in the future.
 

Connections

One thing I never fully anticipated was the number of connections I’d be able to make in such a short time span. Meeting people from different backgrounds has been one of the best parts of this year. I had no idea that there were so many people out there just as passionate about producing quality software as I am, it’s been a great feeling! So I have Twitter to thank for exposing me to so many supportive people that I would have never had the chance to meet.
 
 
So here’s looking forward to what lies ahead for 2016!