Whenever I mention that I’m on twitter I usually get the rolling of eyes and the groans, and the “I just don’t get twitter”, so I’m going to tell you why you should be on twitter. I know you think that you don’t care what Brittany Spears is up to, or what Ashton Kuchar had for lunch. I don’t care either.
Last Summer, at the height of LDAC, as I was trying to track how the cadets from the Golden Knight Battalion were fairing I realized that Cadet Command had delved into Social Media and ws using Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr to get the word out about LDAC. I set up my twitter account and started following LDAC, and Lead6 (Commander of Cadet Command), and the LTC PAO amongst others. Some of the info was useless info, but some of the tweets alerted me to interesting information that I could access and share if I thought warranted.
Currently I follow any cadet in the Battalion that I can, all the Clarkson University twitter users I can find, and twitter feeds from various Army bases around the country. Sometimes I don’t really need to know that Fort Hood’s 4th of July fireworks show will start at 2100 hours, but it’s nice to know that is the kind of information that I can have real time access to. I follow scholarship and college search organizations, and marketing gurus, and am always getting good information and helpful links from these tweets. With twitter you can also share useful links, photos, and let people know web pages have been updated. A “tweet” will be “tweeted” when this article is posted, and all my followers and friends on Facebook will be alerted that this blog had been updated. They can also “retweet” this information to all their followers, which is the power of twitter. The first time I was retweeted by “armyrotc” I was pretty excited.
One last tip is to use an aggregator like tweetdeck. What this can do for you is allow you to search for keywords in tweets. In my case I have two columns that search for “ROTC” and “Army ROTC”. If anyone has these words in their tweet I see it. If it is a question, I can pop on and provide my expert advice. It also allows me to see what people are talking about with reference to what I’m interested in.
here is a short list of some of the people I follow:
- CUinNYCandCT – Clarkson Admissions
- FortLeavenworth – Fort Leavenworth
- ArmyWellBeing – Army Well Being
- MyArmyReserve – Army Reserve Information
- Twitter_Tips – Twitter Help and tips
- ClarksonHistory – Clarkson History
- SignalCorps – Fort Gordon
- warriorforge – LDAC
- ClarksonUniv – Clarkson University Information
- armyrotc – Army ROTC
Follow my tweets at clarksonarmy
Golden Knight Battalion 
Have you been able to put together a follow list of your useful twitter sources, that we can follow too? Or even a list of GKB cadets?
Not yet, but I should…lists are another feature that is really handy that I didn’t really touch on. I am listed in three lists, @armyrotc/army-rotc, @mathgoddexx/clarkson, and ArmyWellBeing/soldiers. Will have to publish a couple lists myself.
I’m looking forward to getting more information about this topic, don’t worry about negative opinions.