My Twitting learning points

I've been Twitting for just overa month and have been through quite a steep learning curve, I’ve made a few good ‘on line’ friends, and dumped a few.

I’m starting to get it, fine tuning the people I want to follow and – having been quite sceptic – I’m starting to see that it has enormous value for us, our business, and for expanding and sharing good ideas and practice in social care and safeguarding; both of children and adults.

Everyone and his dog does top tips for Twitting, these aren’t tips at all, they are things I have learnt.

I come across on occasions as a bit of a know it all, more about this below, but I’m not – I am genuinely open to learning and receive advice with open arms; if anyone has any good ideas for my expanding venture into Twitterdom I’d love to hear from you.

I’m doing this just before going to the Pub, in a bit of a rush, so sorry for any spelling or grammatical mistakes and the list isn't in order of priority; it’s as it flows from my brain.

1.       It’s like the pub

@Sharpebyname (Dave), the guy who shared his thoughts about Twitter with our staff team in November, said it’s like being at the pub. My ears pricked up right away! He said imagine a really busy pub, lots of people you already know, lots more you may be on nodding terms with and others are completely unknown. Everyone’s engaged, some are talking complete rubbish or about football, others are deep in conversation about the economy.  You are able to join any conversation at any time, indeed, you can be having a multitude of conversations going on at the same time.  Yeh, it’s just like that except there’s no beer – mores the pity.  However, what I have learnt is that you have to be careful when you switch from a frivolous exchange with one group to a serious debate with another; the serious people might not like it if you join the debate half way through and say something like “that’s a load a bollocks”, when maybe you should have said, “hmmmm, that’s an interesting perspective, can you unwrap it a bit please”.

2.       Keep the swearing to post watershed

I swear, I know this can offend some people, it’s absolutely not my intention to do so but I’m not going to change – sorry.  When I first started Twitting, almost every other word was a swear word and I gravitated to following people who used the same language.  I thought, Dave said it was like being in the pub and when I’m in the pub (at work too to be honest) I do a lot of effing and jeffing and I think it’s important that people see me for what I am.  It didn’t work, whilst many people (serious and learned) do a spot of swearing, the majority do not. Someone said in their Top Ten hints for Twitter that there are no rules, I don’t agree, one of the rules is don’t swear.  Or, maybe, keep it til past 9 or 10 at night; even serious people relax a bit after that time.  Mind you, it’s morning somewhere in the world at all times on Twitter so I’m likely to restrict my swearing even more over the next stage of my induction.

3.       Don’t try to be someone

There’s plenty of research on this, on people creating on line personas that bear no resemblance to them. Some, as we all know, do this in evil and sinister ways, for example, to lure and groom children; less sinister are those who use on line dating agencies to meet people way out of their league. Years ago, in the late 80’s, I facilitated some training on the up and coming Children Act 1989; many of you will know that this was an incredibly complex and far reaching piece of legislation.  One of the training sessions was to a bunch of social work managers who knew the law much better than I, and I tried to give it out that I was an expert. Most were kind but one of the audience ripped me to pieces and I learnt a big lesson: ‘don’t try to fool people, it don’t work’! Better to be honest, show yourself warts and all, don’t try to enter debates that you know nothing about or, if you do, ask questions to expand your knowledge.  If there are people who clearly know better than you, give them a nod; just don’t big yourself up.

4.       It’s a small and wonderful world

My favourite uncle has just died, his name was John; I went to his funeral yesterday.  He was 86, had always struck me as kind, gentle and good all round guy. When my cousin called me to say he had passed away, she said “it’s the end of an era”. I’m not going to bore you with my thoughts and feelings about Uncle John anymore, but we are living a very small world, the digital era, and we are adventurers in that world. We think this is amazing, being able to chat in real time on line with people on the other side of the world; and it is, I’ve had some great interactions, not all of them positive/there are plenty of differences of opinion. And I believe  we are only scratching the surface in relation to ‘our world’ of social care and safeguarding, I’m really excited about this and we have to find ways to get more colleagues to join in, share ideas and especially good practice.

5. Don’t be a used car salesman

Look, to be honest, we’re in business, we are ‘for profit’ we have to keep the bank manager happy etc. If I get a chance to sell you something, I will. But, as we do out in the normal non Twitting world, I/we try to be ethical about the way we do things. We’ll sing our best bits from the rooftops and we’ll celebrate and buy ourselves a drink if we win some new business; but we are in the caring business and we genuinely care about helping people do the right thing. To this end, we have learnt that for every one Twit (I know it’s a Tweet by the way) that says how wonderful we are, there has to be at least ten more which either are giving i.e. offering free template procedures or practice guidance; or are just plain fun e.g. having a dig at Little Mix or Piers Morgan (NB he deserves all he gets in my opinion!). Twitters don’t want to know if you are always trying to sell them something. By the way, everyone who’s following me with profiles like “I can help you increase your followers by 100 fold” or bearing their breasts and asking if I’d like to meet up, thanks for following but don’t expect me to follow you back!

6. It’s like being in a pub but don’t have a drink!

I think most people learn this one very quickly, come to the virtual Twitter pub but don’t have a drink!  I’ve already mentioned that you have to be careful, keep the swearing and offensive reposts to a minimum or at least until you get to know your followers real well. But the top tip if I have one is don’t Twit if you’ve had a drink. Very early on I learnt this lesson, I came in midway through an exchange between a celebrity and his hundreds of followers; he was being profound and everyone was hanging on his every word, I’d had a (few) drinks and, erm, I said something I should have kept to myself. Result, an avalanche of horrible Twits about me. Frankly, some of them were disproportional but fair cop gov, and my apologies to the celebrity and his followers!

7. Don’t stick to your comfort zone

My specialism, or special interest, I’m no expert, is childcare; in particular residential childcare – I believe residential workers are (or can be) the salt of the earth. More about this another time.  However, I’ve learnt in life that it’s good to be open to the interests and views of people across the whole social care and safeguarding world; adults and children too. I can’t say I know very much about adult social care or safeguarding – nothing that I can teach others – but there are tons of similarities across the sector boundaries, of values, of issues and problems; and we all have an opportunity to break down those barriers and learn from each other – and support each other. So I try to follow people who a) are in sectors that I have previously had no interest in and b) seem to be either passionate or knowledgeable about their world. This really in enlightening.

8. Follow newbies

At the start of my twitting venture I tended to follow people with thousands of followers, like most people, Stephen Fry was initially on my list, and Alan Sugar blah blah. But they’re not any more, sorry SF and LAS, I’m sure you’re devastated but I have discovered that there are loads of people out there, some with a tiny following, who have much more to say for themselves.  Also, in my previous non Twitting life, I tended to ignore inexperienced or non qualified social workers; I’m in business, they aren’t the decision makers. But I follow quite a few SW students, newly qualified  professionals and a growing number of people from the other side e.g. people who were in care.  This is really refreshing and I am learning so much from them.

9. Private v Public

When the Nov 30^th strike was on the horizon/taking place, there was quite a bit of angst and some bad feeling between colleagues in the private/for profit and public sector. I’m not going to replay the arguments, you know them as well or better than I.  I thought this was unfortunate and took our eye off the real issue, which is that we are all in this (or most of us) for the same reasons, we want to change things for vulnerable people. I’m convinced that there are lots of opportunities for us to share and work together, across the private/public divide, to achieve this. We have to stop with the generalisations and open our eyes to this possibility, and Twitter is a good place to start.

10. Sorry but some people shouldn’t be doing it

When I started this post, my learning points, I thought maybe I’d get to 5 or 6 points; here I am at ten!  I’ve said above that I believe some residential childcare workers are the salt of the earth. I used to say they all were, but I always knew that was a load of tosh.  I had many (almost 30) very happy years working in children’s homes, making lots of friends and I either saw or played a part in some wonderful projects and individual pieces of work that transformed children’s lives.  But I met some horrible, even dangerous and abusive people; I did a placement with Frank Beck for example – that guy was real bad!!. Things have changed enormously over the years, recruitment, training and de-selection processes are hugely refined nowadays; but our business – the business we are all engaged in of trying to improve the lot for vulnerable adults and children – is still ruined and tainted by people who are just plain bad and many of them manage to get in under the radar, they’re  very difficult to spot, some are highly skilled at looking like they are doing the right things, but taking small opportunities to hurt people either physically or emotionally.  I do get a bit miffed when people try to give it out that everyone in the work is just trying to earn an honest crust doing the right thing by vulnerable people, this is wrong, and I won’t shy away from saying so.

Special thanks to my old mate @ListerNick and my new virtual mates @SimplySW, @mattpearson, @tashawhitstable, @MentalHealthCop, @UKSafeschool, @Sharpebyname, @jaxrafferty, @MargoJMilne, @shirleyayres, @jonbolton, @Ermintrude2, @Tweeter_Tori, @Theresauno, @StaceInspire, @WhoseShoes and @hopeandbelieve.

I'm off to the pub now, but if anyone has a comment or - better still - some advice to help me be a better Twit, I'm all ears!