Writing is an attraction. You can’t assume that readers will be interested in what you’re going to be talking about if your lead in sentence is bland and not intriguing. Writing in the digital age is more of an art. It’s a different approach to writing, and for many, can be more relatable. There’s more of a creative license to the content being stated, because no one’s going to spend their time reading an article that doesn’t draw their attention in right away. There are thousands of other blog posts waiting to be read out there, so the writers must make their blog post, or other forms of social media worth the read. The social media world is fast paced and the style and content being shown must be up to date. Through the works of Jen Rajchel’s “Consider the Audience”, Leigh Writer’s “Tweet Me A Story”, Gayle S. Stever and Kevin Lawson’s “Twitter as a Way for Celebrities to Communicate with Fans”, Onook Oh, Maish Agrawal, H. Raghav Rao’s “Community Intelligence and Social Media Services”, and Patti Neumann’s “Strategy Is Part of Social”, all of these authors and researchers expressed the importance of how the use of social media can enhance success through finding your voice in concise, compact writing through social media such as Twitter.
For Jen Rajchel, she goes into exploring what’s appropriate to be put out on the web. She expresses her opinion on how writing through the web is risky, especially if you’re a less established writer. You never know who’s reading your blog, and as Stephanie Cawley, a recent Re: Humanities presenter stated, “The more responsibility to the audience and the increased investment that students have, the less that the work becomes about grades and more it becomes about shaping their scholarship” (Paragraph 12). This statement is true to the idea that writing through social media is more laid back. There are more options, such as Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress. Twitter is one form of social media in which it allows users to find their voice in 140-characters or less.
With the idea of Twitter, Leigh Wright breaks down the many aspects in how beneficial Twitter is for our writing skills. Leigh Wright, the professor of a college course on social media created assignments for her student to participate in. “At the beginning of the semester in the 200-level class, I distribute a scavenger hunt list of questions and ask them to look for clues on campus and ask people questions as they tweet about the experience. To facilitate the discussion, I set up a class hashtag (#wright294) and asked them to include it on every tweet.” (Paragraph 15) The exercise forced students to find their own voice and be limited in how much they could write. This tactic allowed them to break down a story and tweet only the important aspects of it. Through this, the assignment impacted students in the real world and helped them when it came to writing concise, to the point essays.
Similarly, Twitter is a way to connect with others. There’s a sense of community involved in following others on Twitter and having the ability to retweet and favorite tweets. As Gayle S. Stever and Kevin Lawson both communicated in a research paper based on the relationship between celebrities, twitter, and your average person or fan. Twitter is a form of social media that puts everyone on a leveled playing field. As the Stever and Lawson mentioned, “Most importantly, fans can send the celebrity personal messages without the celebrity needing to grant access to a personal page or site. The celebrity can reply in kind, again without having to join the fan’s page or without forming any kind of formal connection with the fan” (340). Twitter makes it personal enough where both the fan and celebrity can feel a sense of connection between each other. This also brings forth the point in how Twitter creates a world where average people and celebrities are on the same level. It’s not only Twitter in which this is the case. Fashion blogs and other websites can be competitions to large news sources such as Vogue, in the fashion sense.
Yet Twitter is also a news source in itself. Oh, Agrawal, and Rao write in detail about how social media, such as Twitter can be very useful for getting information on social crises. With increase in social media, those who are active on Twitter can access news right at the scene of the crisis. These three authors take on a different rout and explain that users of social media must be careful in the validity of what they’re reading. This is extremely relevant to social crises that occur around the world. “A recent examination of some of Google’s real-time search results for Tweeter [sic] and blogs reveals that real-time information was mostly ‘fabricated content, unverified events, lies and misinterpretation’ (Metaxas and Mustafaraj 2010, p.1). This relates back to Jen Rajchel’s blog post on audience and how you never know who’s reading your posts on the Internet. Many believe that a larger audience isn’t viewing their posts on social media, but any false accusation on a certain topic can leak out and cause a rumor to occur. The three researchers proposed this idea in that although social media websites are beneficial to many, there are risks attached to it.
Lastly, Patti Neumann briefly wraps up the benefits of social media in her article in the Baltimore Jewish Times. She discusses the importance of social media from a business point of view. Neuman goes on to explain how you must strategically plan out every move on social media. Whether it is a tweet that’s going out to your followers or gathering a fan base to help improve your business, “Like it or not,” Neumann states, “Social media is irreversibly changing how we market and interact with our consumers. Making a very successful plan in using social media is serious business. It can make your business more productive, improve sales and increase your bottom line” (10). The community you build is the most important aspect of using social media. Without a following or fan base, your part in the media world is nothing. Community is key to being successful.
I for one believe that social media in general is key to being successful in this day and age. There are many beneficial factors to using social media, and especially Twitter. As stated before, the 140-character word limit allows users to find their voice. Through the use of Twitter, I’ve found that my voice comes off as very sarcastic and witty. Others may find that their voice is more serious and news oriented. Along with finding your voice, the word limit forces you to get your point across in a shorter manner. This can benefit when writing a paper, allowing the writer to eliminate any unnecessary wording that does not need to be there. Along with the idea that Twitter can help with essay writing, being a first year student at Dickinson, I’m still working on my writing skills. Twitter allows me to learn to not use fill-in words and to get straight to the point.
Not only is Twitter a valuable resource to help writers find their voice, but it can also be a pathway to inform others of events that are going on. For college students, Twitter is definitely a good resource, whether it is to spread the word out about a sporting or club event, or send a message along to another person on campus. Through retweeting one another and following Twitter pages, communities begin to form and word about this certain event can be spread throughout campus. The communication that goes into the use of Twitter can only enhance one’s success in life, including in present day, social media is a prime resource to be successful in business oriented jobs.
I interned at a start up social media group this past summer called NowThis News. The use of Twitter in this start up was key to their website spreading and having more publicity. NowThis News is a website that has current events shown in 1-2 minute long videos.
The social team at this start up used Twitter to follow mass amounts of people who liked other Twitters that were linked back to NowThis News, such as Buzzfeed. By following mass amounts of people on Twitter allows this start up to gain attraction towards their Twitter account, which would then lead to more traffic going to the official site. When those who were followed by NowThis News on Twitter will then follow their Twitter page and through retweeting and hitting the favorite button on tweets, word begins to get out about this new website. The techniques to gain attraction towards websites and blogs can be very influential on knowing how to gain viewers to a new blog or even start up.
There can be downsides to the use of Twitter though. Although some may care about their friend eating a slice of pizza, many do not. On occasions it can be used for the use of mindless and witty thoughts, so tweeting about eating pizza is only acceptable on occasions, but Twitter should be a form of social media where people can express their thoughts in a witty and intellectual way. It can be a great source of sharing links and expressing opinions on current events occurring in the world around us.
Through using Twitter as a way to express opinions and ideas with others, Dickinson College is a liberal arts college that allows students to experience and find what they’re interested in. Once finding that interest, what better way to form a community with those who are interested in the same topic then through social media? These communities can be formed through Twitter as a way to share ideas and thoughts through links to websites as well as their own personal blog. A liberal arts education is very similar to web writing and the usage of social media itself. The web is very open minded to anything and everything, just as a liberal arts education allows students to experience a broad number of classes before deciding on a set major. There’s more creativity behind both ends of the spectrum, which is education and social media. Through the use of Twitter and social media, it can enhance the learning community that Dickinson has to offer.
Bibliography (MLA):
Neumann, Patti. “Strategy Is Part of Social.” Baltimore Jewish Times [Baltimore] 15 Mar. 2013: 10-11. Print.
Oh, Onook, Manish Agrawal, and H. Raghav Rao. Community Intelligence and Social Media Services: A Rumor Theoretic Analysis of Tweets During Social Crises. MIS Quarterly & The Society for Information Management, June 2013. Web. 2 Oct. 2013.
Rajchel, Jen. “Consider the Audience.” Weblog post. Web Writing Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning. Jack Dougherty, 15 Sept. 2013. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.
Stever, Gayle S., and Kevin Lawson. Twitter as a Way for Celebrities to Communicate with Fans: Implications for the Study of Parasocial Interaction. North American Journal of Psychology, n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.
Wright, Leigh. “Tweet Me A Story.” Web Writing Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning. Jack Dougherty, Fall 2013. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.