I recently created a Twitter account for my publication, A Teacher’s Hat. The purpose of the publication is to be a collection of articles related to teaching – giving voice to preservice teachers and recording their experiences as well as mine — a safe place to discuss ideas that we haven’t tried yet ourselves but are excited about and starting on this journey to be a reflective teacher.
After adding content to A Teacher’s Hat for about three months, I decided to make the Twitter account
- To engage with the bigger teacher community – my articles on Medium don’t have to be restricted to discussion on Medium alone. Twitter is a great way to reach out.
- To get more readers – Medium is where the ideas are stored but readers are everywhere. This is proven by the recent promotion of my post by Teacher2Teacher on Twitter.
- To discover new topics I should be aware of and learn more about.
- To reflect on what teachers already do and to grow from these discussions.
- To eventually be able to get more authors for the publication if anyone is interested – I know there are lots of publications out there but it is often hard to approach the popular ones or because one isn’t exactly sure where ones ideas fit.
When I started A Teacher’s Hat, I thought of it as a collection of my work related to teaching – a record of my reflections. Thankfully, it is not just mine and by having more authors and followers other than me (ha!), I open the platform to be bigger than me. Also, for my future employers, it is the go-to place for my writings on teaching and learning. My Medium account contains other stories too (like this one!) which aren’t necessarily about teaching. A Teacher’s Hat filters out the content by topic, keeping my other interest separate.
Coming back to Twitter, I manage my personal account (@_armedwithabook) as well as the publication account (@a_teachers_hat). A friend of time, Varun Bhargava, who is also a writer for the publication, also oversees the Twitter account. He is the Promotional Manager because I love his ideas and feedback. 🙂
My dilemma around identity comes when I want to engage in a discussion: my responses come from personal experience and I often question whether it is better to respond and share from my personal account or should I engage as a publication or as an individual? I encountered this dilemma twice today and each time, I asked myself two questions which helped me decide:
- Why do I want to be a part of this discussion? — Which can be interpreted as: is this about education and teaching? Am I speaking as someone in education? I have knowledge about a number of subjects — I am a Computing Science major, I love reading books, I enjoy poetry — there are interests that I have that are not related to teaching and not every conversation is about teaching.
- If I reply as my publication, what am I saying about my publication? — A Teacher’s Hat is about teaching. Does it make sense to talk about data analysis as a publication when none of the articles mention it, or would it be more credible to reply as someone who works in data analysis (even if part time)?
One of the ways to get more readers and viewers for a publication is to engage in relevant conversations, write good comments such that people who happen upon them, want to check you out, whether on Twitter or, from there, on Medium. They migth access your content — which should speak for itself. I am new to promoting a publication. I know that it takes years to build a following — whether on Twitter or on Medium. Ultimately, as long as there is engaging content — content that is relatable and helpful to someone who comes across it, my job is to keep directing people to where they can maybe find some inspiration that they need.
Right now, it feels awkward because I am the one who writes on it most. Eventually, there will be more authors and then I will no longer be in this dilemma — I would be promoting them truly and not self-promoting my ideas and writing.
Do you (or have you) struggle(d) with promoting on social media? Do you have another account which represents a larger body of people and has a different purpose from your personal account?
As I mentioned, I am new to this. Looking for your stories of similar experiences from which I will find inspiration to do better. 🙂
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