Own Your Twitter Experience
While we were all looking forward to a new year, it can be a little rough to start. Between returning to work after some time off over the holidays and trying to start new habits while breaking old ones, it can feel hard to keep up. Most people’s favorite thing about the Tableau community is the support, encouragement, and camaraderie and they’re trying to balance being actively engaged in it with their other responsibilities. This blog isn’t going to get you all the way there but I hope it will help. I’m going to walk through some ways I navigate the Twitter space that help make it easier to be involved on a regular basis.
Below I’ll tell you the what, why, and how of the following:
adding tweets to your bookmarks
checking only your mentions
scheduling your tweets
utilizing advanced search
untagging other accounts in your replies
filtering unwanted information from your timeline
Add Tweets to Your Bookmarks
What: Bookmarking a tweet saves it to a specific space on Twitter. It’s different than liking in that it’s private so no one else can see your bookmarks and the author will not receive a notification that you bookmarked their tweet. I use them both very differently.
Why: When I like a tweet it is because I want to show appreciation for it. When I bookmark a tweet it’s because I want to save it for later. I use this most commonly to archive posts I may not have time for at the moment (e.g., blogs I want to read later, vizzes I want to dive deeper into at a different time). And I don’t necessarily rush myself to go back; I just try and make a point about twice a week to go through my recent bookmarks when I can give it more attention. The benefit of this is it allows me to scroll through Twitter without the pressure of actively going through every interesting thing I come across. It’s also a great place to save things that inspire you.
How: There are four icons below a tweet. From left to right they let you comment on it, retweet it, like it, and share it. The bookmark option will be under the fourth icon. Click and either select the bookmark icon if you’re on mobile or ‘Add Tweet to Bookmarks’ if you’re on desktop. It will be in your ‘Bookmarks’ section on the left of the desktop window or under the hamburger menu on mobile.
Check Your Mentions
What: It easily goes unnoticed but your notification section has two areas. One area has all of your notifications including likes, follows, retweets, and replies. The other only has your ‘mentions’ which essentially is just the replies to your tweet.
Why: I try really hard to reply to everyone who takes the time to comment on my posts but they can get lost when I don’t log on for a while. While I do really appreciate everyone who likes and retweets my posts as well, I find it beneficial to be able to just see the comments without everything else in between.
How: Both on mobile and desktop when you visit your notification section it defaults to ‘All’. To switch, all you have to do is select ‘Mentions’ at the top.
Schedule Your Tweets
What: When you go to tweet you have the option to send it at a later time instead of tweeting it right at that moment.
Why: This is a great option if you run a blog or an initiative or think of things mainly after midnight. Also if you’re Kevin Flerlage and don’t seem to miss a single person’s birthday. You may have a schedule of consistently putting things out on a certain day but it’s nice to be able to plan ahead. This option also REALLY comes in handy for #TableauFF. Fridays always seem to get away from me so if I can I will schedule them on Thursday night.
How: This option is only available on desktop to my knowledge. There are five icons below the area where you draft a tweet. From left to right they let you add a photo, add a gif, make a poll, add emojis, and schedule your tweet. If you select the last icon on the right that looks like a little calendar, it will open a window for you to set the date and time you’d like the tweet to go out. When you press confirm you will see the post time at the top of the tweet window and the ‘Tweet’ button will be replaced by one that says ‘Schedule’.
Utilize Advanced Search
What: You can use the regular search option on Twitter for a word, hashtag, or an account. But this yields more results than will likely be helpful unless you are just browsing. Twitter also has an advanced search option that allows for significantly more specifications.
Why: Maybe someone sent you an article you wanted to read and you forgot to save it. You remember what it was about but not who sent it or what thread it was in. This can help with that. Maybe you remember Jeff Shaffer put out a tip about tooltip formatting that would be helpful on a project you’re working on. This can help with that. Maybe you remember a recipe from Katie Wagner that you wanted to try. This can help with that too. All of these are real scenarios I’ve used it for.
How: You can get to it by going to this link. There are a lot of options so I’ll just mention the ones I used the most. Under the ‘Accounts’ portion of the window, I often specify the from and to accounts. I also usually use the ‘Words’ portion at the top. I haven’t used it yet but there are also date range capabilities which could be helpful if you, for example, knew this tweet came out around the Tableau Conference or the beginning of the year.
Untag Other Accounts
What: A tweet may have tagged a lot of accounts either in the body of the tweet or in an associated picture. When you reply, all of those accounts will receive a notification even if your tweet is only relevant to the original author. You can untag the other accounts in your reply.
Why: Admittedly, this will help you less than it will help the tagged accounts. But I bet you would appreciate getting fewer notifications that weren’t for or about you*. I try to do this as a courtesy to the other people included because I know for me notifications can get overwhelming.
How: When you hit reply on a tweet it will show you who you are replying to. If you select those names, it will bring up all the accounts that would get a notification from your reply. You can uncheck ‘Others in this conversation’ to only reply to the author, or you can just uncheck some of them.
*If you are tagged in a post you’re getting a lot of notifications from it that aren’t for you, you can mute them. On your notifications page, hit the three little circles at the top right of the post and select ‘Mute this conversation’. This will only stop you from receiving notifications from it. You can still see all replies and interactions if you visit the post.
Mute Unwanted Information
What: There may be information or topics you don’t want on your timeline. We only have a small amount of control over what we see by choosing who we follow. You can mute words and accounts and they won’t show up on your feed.
Why: One of the things that keep people away from Twitter is the news. It’s been a rough year and seeing that information constantly can be stressful and can take away from the reason you signed on. I will be honest, this has other use cases too. The first time I used it was when I was behind on Game of Thrones and didn’t want to see any spoilers so I muted all related words. But if you just need to mute the words ‘capitol’ or ‘impeach’ for right now, that works too.
How: Mobile - hamburger menu > Settings and privacy > Content preferences > Muted. Desktop - More > Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety > Mute and block. The other nice thing about this is in addition to choosing what you’re muting, you can also choose where you are muting it from, and for how long. Maybe you just want a week off, that’s an option.
And last but certainly not least, everything in moderation. I personally try to set aside one or two short periods a day where I go on and do what I can. Emphasis on what I can. You don’t have to be on all the time, or at all. Do what works for you! But if you do choose to go visit every once in a while, I hope some of these help.
