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Follow for Sponsors and Associations
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FEATURED on CCI
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Why Twitter?
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"[the] unique culture of Twitter, which revolves around passing resources on to others, makes it really quite useful as an outreach and communications channel" -- Reaching Out To a Wide Audience: A Twitter Case Study, Idealware, 2010.

Streaming News
Sharing
Community Culture
Exposure
Credibility
Learning
Advocacy Alerts
Activities
Direct Access
How Do I Sign-Up?
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Signing up for Twitter
  1. Go to http://twitter.com/
  2. click "Sign-Up"
  3. Fill out the information that Twitter prompts you to fill out
  4. Verify your registration with the email that was sent to your email acount
  5. Follow the guidance Twitter provides for setting up your profile and seeing if any of your email contacts are on Twitter
Tools to Manage
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Extra Twitter Tools

  • Hootsuite: You can manage your Twitter, Facebook and Linked In account from one place,         
  • Paper.li:  You can create a daily digest of your favorite people to follow or hashtags(#);
  • Tweetdeck:  This helps you manage your tweets, see who is tweeting directly to you and you can pick favorite feeds and more.

The Twitter help section also has some great tips for using Twitter to its fullest potential! 
Common Twitter Misconceptions
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Twitter is NOT
  • Just for narcissistic young people talking about themselves;
  • Just for famous people Public Relations;
  • Just for people to feel like they know famous people;
  • Just for people to feel important and talk about themselves; and
  • Useless tool for someone like me, I just use Facebook.
RT, @, # - What in the World?
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What do you see all that time that makes you go hmm?  How about @, # and RT?  Here is what they do and why they are useful.
  • @ is a way for you to directly message people on twitter.  You can do it on Facebook too, it is the same idea.  People get notified that you have mentioned them directly in your tweet.  It is nice to do if you retweet (RT) something that person has posted.  It is a good way to get someone's attention too! 
  • # is called a hashtag in the Twitter world.  When each and every person in the twitter world puts a "#" in front of a word or phrase it will create an entirely separate twitter feed for just that topic.  For example if you search #preschool, you will get results of all of the tweets people have made that have to do with preschool.
  • RT means retweet.  This goes in front of a tweet that you are reposting from someone else's twitter feed.
Twitter Talk Example
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I wasn't sure about a new memo released by the USDA and if it applied to the CACFP so I asked the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) via twitter.  They answered my question within 24 hours.  This is how the conversation went:

My Tweet to FRAC
@ @ re: the memo ( SP_29 - 201) dated 4/14, this includes all child nutrition programs such as CACFP? please confirm

FRACs Response Tweet
@ - Are you asking about SP_29-2011, Nutrition Requirements about Fluid Milk? If so, it is only about school b'fast and lunch
MUST Follow for ALL
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