Follow @WellfleetDems

Twitter Guide

(Thanks to Brendan Joyce and Esther Elkin for this handy information)

"Here's a straightforward guide for Twitter I wrote up for you.  Let me know if this helps, or if you need any clarification."

1. To create a Twitter account, go to www.twitter.com and fill out the "New to Twitter" form.   [We created a 'WellfleetDems' Twitter account]

2. You will be brought to a screen that verifies your email address and password, and asks you for a user name. The user name will end up being the handle that people can find you at. Every twitter handle begins with @. So, if you choose WellfleetDems as your user name (has to be all one word), your Twitter handle will end up being @WellfleetDems. When folks want to search for the official Wellfleet Dems twitter account, they would search @WellfleetDems and would be brought right to the page.

3. Once the account is set up you can edit the profile to explain the goals of the committee in a mission statement of sorts. Then, you can start posting!

4. You make posts on Twitter (AKA Tweets) by clicking the feather quill icon on the top right side of the screen. Then you can enter a message up to 140 characters, and click Tweet. You certainly want to take advantage of hash-tags in your Tweets. Hash-tags organize all tweets (globally) into categories that are easily searchable. For example, #MAGov is the hash-tag for all things related to the MA governors race or the office more generally. #USPoli is the hash-tag for all things related to politics in the United States. Similarly, #MAPoli is the hash-tag for all things related to politics in MA. So, if a user was to enter "#MAGov" into the search bar, every Tweet from around the world with "#MAGov" in it would show up on your screen. This is what makes Twitter so effective: it enables people to get their message out to thousands if not millions of users, even without "following" each other. Every post our campaign makes about Juliette will have #MAGov in it, so that when people interested in the race look for more information on Twitter and enter that hash-tag into the search bar, any Tweet we've made will pop up.

5. The last main component of Twitter is "following". Following simply means that you subscribe to a certain account's Tweets. For example, I "follow" Governor Patrick @MASSGovernor. By doing so, his Tweets will show up on my feed, along with Tweets from every other user I follow. Keep in mind that this feed is separate from the hash-tag searches. Your active feed will show Tweets from people you follow, while searching for #MAGov will bring up a different feed with every tweet with #MAGov in it, even if you don't follow the account that posted it. You "follow" a particular user by looking up their account, and selecting the "Follow" icon with the blue bird on it. Some people will follow you back, others won't. It typically depends on who manages the account or how often they use it. Either way, it's the best way to get your name out there!



Brendan Joyce, Southeast Regional Field Organizer
(774) 223-0846 | brendan@juliettekayyem.com

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