Deets on Tweets

Twitter has made great waves as a social media platform, a public service announcement forum, and marketing channel. While its creation was to provide a social network, it has been very effective in providing value beyond that. As the third largest social media, Twitter has great reach and power to connect people all around the world.

Twitter has proven its worth more than once in the past 13 years since it was made in 2006. When Houston residents sought help from hurricane Harvey, and Egyptian citizens live tweeted details of an ongoing revolution, Twitter was there as a news outline and hotline. Despite the fact that there are other potential sources that could be used to put out information, Twitter’s micro-blogging format forces people to put out concise pieces of information. This means the message is easily digestible and very shareable. While this gives a perfect opportunity for organizations to market themselves, events like these show that the platform has potential beyond a networking site.

Twitter can be used in a multitude of ways. It has opportunities as a journalistic, political, and organizational tool, where you can alert the public of ongoing events and happenings. Using hashtags provides a way to put all of these micro-blogs all in one place. In events where the general public is experiencing something together, you can read peoples first responses and reactions easily and quickly. The only problem with this is that there is no real way to filter out any tweets that might be exaggerated or straight up false. We have seen this first-hand in the Boston Marathon Bombings, where some of the tweets that journalists were publishing on bigger news platforms turned out to be falsified. This is not to discount the opportunity that is there on the other side of the story, but fact checking tweets of the journalistic variety is necessary to assure we are educating ourselves and not consuming false information. As a political tool, officials are able to better interact with their following and have a closer relationship with their publics. Sometimes too close even, in the many instances where President Trump publicizes his rants and general discontent. The same is true with organizations and businesses. A greater sense of community is available on twitter, where brands can quickly interact with their customers in 140 characters or less. 

The potential reach Twitter has, whether through a journalistic perspective, a political perspective, or an organizational perspective- is undeniable. Here are three times Twitter has proved its worth in the last year.

1.    1. Popeyes

Popeyes release of their chicken sandwich wasn’t just received well- it resulted in selling out just days after releasing. All this hype over a chicken sandwich proved just how valuable word of mouth marketing on Twitter could be. The feud that commenced across various fast-food chains had everyone trying out Popeyes just so they could see what the hype was all about.

2.#MeToo

This hashtag, aimed to expose and discuss sexual harassment, has been used over 19 million times on Twitter alone. Its clear this really sparked an important conversation since it went viral at the end of 2018. 

3. Greta Thunberg

This 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg gained major attention from public officials and celebrities alike when a video of her advocating environmental awareness went viral on Twitter in October. She received responses from President Trump, Kim Kardashian, and millions of others. As a result, she gained over 7 million followers and even more reach with her inspiring message. 

For this Twitter project, I chose to follow Barack Obama, Rihanna and The NFL’s accounts. While I love Barack Obama and Rihanna and follow them on my personal twitter, I have not once thought about following the NFL. I know nothing about football and wouldn’t want their tweets distracting me from the memes. Rihanna and Obama have great twitter followings and oniline presence, so I was excited to have to reply to them on their accounts. While it was more difficult than expected to say what I wanted to say in the character limit, less is sometimes more. Twitter is such a weird place where politicians, celebrates and normal people can have a conversation and exchange information. It really did change the way that we receive news and information. In this day and age, no one seems to have the attention span or the time to read more than 140 characters. While writing blog posts has its time and place, writing out thoughtful tweets has more opportunity in my opinion. Twitter has been around a long time, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

How about them wikiHows?

Communicating a step by step guide to a slightly more general topic like How to Shop Sustainable Clothing requires more thought than a cut and dry step by step guide. There is an in-between point of over-explaining and making too long of an article, and making an article far too vague for anyone to follow. Discussing something with so many possibilities makes it a little more difficult to give a step by step guide. In writing How to Shop Sustainable Clothing personal experience was a large inspiration. Sustainable fashion has become a “trend” per se in the best possible way. Something that good for the environment, but with a kind of complicated and ambiguous Writing a wikiHow may not be the most enthralling thing you can possibly do, but it is an interesting thing to experience nonetheless. Communicating clear and concise instructions to an audience is far more difficult of a task than you may initially think.
From the name, it sounded like something that could use a step by step guide on a platform like wikiHow. From the beginning to the end, wikiHow steps require very intentional wording. The steps must be clear, they must be ordered correctly and you cant let your grammar or spelling issues get in the way of what you’re trying to say. It is interesting to think that there are people who make wikiHows like it is their job. The intricacies of a wikiHow article went far beyond any expectations. While writing a wikiHow may not be an extremely difficult task, it takes a lot of time and thought beyond critical thinking. Referencing the article How to Write a New Article on wikiHow is a great way to learn about the platform within the platform. This article discusses the small details of writing a wikiHow that really helps the writer to analyze each step being written.
In discussing sustainable fashion, the term in itself isn’t found on wikiHow. Neither are its related names, like eco-friendly clothing, ethical clothing or green clothing. There seemed to be an empty space on wikiHow, while the term Sustainable Fashion is littered throughout other search engines. Writing more of a guide than a step by step instruction was more effective in communicating all the possibilities of reaching the end goal, shopping sustainably.
If getting into sustainable clothing was something you considered, but were you were ultimately overwhelmed with the long wordy articles and blog posts on it and went on to continue your online shopping endeavors, this wikiHow aims to fill all your needs for a one-stop-shop all about sustainable fashion.

Another way that helped to form an outline for the wikiHow was discussing what sustainable fashion meant to others. If this is a topic that you have previous experience with, then your steps for shopping sustainable fashion might already be clear, while on the other hand if you have never heard those two words placed together before you might first want to spend some time researching the topic before you go on to follow any of the steps. With writing the wikiHow it is important to be as objective as possible and realize you could be exposing someone to this topic for the first time ever. Writing as if that is the case makes for a clearer and easier to follow the how-to guide. Without assumptions of anyone's knowledge, there is a small possibility of boring the reader but in general, the audience comes to wikiHow for a simple guide. The over-explanations are more helpful than anything and in discussing sustainable fashion, it is clear that many people are unclear on what that quite is exactly.
After posting How to Shop Sustainable Fashion and it undergoing review, new insight on the article from the admins showed that maybe the steps were not quite as elaborate as they maybe could have been. Maybe focusing on an individual part of the article at a time would have helped to make the article better suited for the admin's liking.  For example, when the article references researching sustainable fashion as a step, the step could include subsets of how to go about researching sustainable fashion.
Ultimately,  writing a wikiHow is a tedious experience. From the planning involved to the wrath of the admins, there is a lot more that goes into a wikiHow than seen on the surface, or webpage rather. Hours of time, thought and even research goes into every wikiHow page, whether it is created by a professional or a student like this one. Making a wikiHow may not be something you consider doing every day or ever even, but it is an extremely educational experience that will make you grow to appreciate the platform far more.