Tip: Engage your Twitter followers

Credit: Pixabay

Over the last decade, Twitter has increasingly become the first port of call for discovering breaking news. Today, there are 330 million monthly active users of Twitter worldwide, 10 times the figure from 2010.

Jennifer Hollett, former head of news partnerships for Twitter, shared her insights into what journalists can do to better to make the most out of the platform and engage with their followers.

As well as being useful for getting leads and questions from the public, Hollett says that Twitter, when used effectively, can help build trust when journalists reply and retweet to their following.

"The easiest way to interact with the public is to respond to Tweets and engage fans in conversation," she writes.

Maybe we should stop equating women's intelligence/ability to do their job by what they're wearing. I don't care if her arms are covered or not - I care if she's a good journalist (says the reporter who's gotten lots of attention, good & bad, for what she's chosen to wear on TV) https://t.co/70EPqUh1t4

— Ginella Massa (@GinellaMassa) February 13, 2018

"In this example, a TV reporter made history by becoming Canada’s first hijab-wearing news anchor on a major broadcast. Here, she jumps into a Twitter conversation about female news anchors wearing sleeveless dresses, replying to a Tweet from her own newsroom."

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