This is a training that was conducted for the NWS offices. It includes the basics of Twitter, some tips and best practices for NWS offices to use on Twitter and finally a section on detecting fake tweets and fake pictures.

1. The Long and Short of
Twitter
Karen Hatfield Alex Lamers Tim Brice
WFO TSA WFO TAE WFO EPZ

2. The Long and Short of Twitter
•
• Twitter Tips and Best Practices
• Avoiding Fake Tweets
Twitter Basics

3. What is Twitter?
• “A real-time information network”
• “Connects you to the latest stories, ideas,
opinions and news about what you find
interesting”
• “Short bursts of information…Tweets”
www.twitter.com/about

4. Why Use Twitter?
• “Connects businesses [government agencies]
to customers in real time”
To Give AND Get
• “Quickly share information with people interested
in their products and services”
Information!
• “Gather real-time market intelligence and
feedback”
• “Build relationships with customers, partners, and
influencers”
• “Listen in and retrieve up-to-the-second
information”
www.twitter.com/about

5. Basic Terminology
• Tweet
• Tidbit of Information
• 140 Character Limit
• Follows
• You Follow Other Accounts to See Their Tweets
• Others Follow You to See Your Tweets
• @Username
• Mentions Another User in a Tweet
• #Hashtags
• Groups Tweets into a “Category”
• More Likely that Non-Followers Will See Your Tweet

6. Basic Terminology
• Retweet
• Transmits Another’s Tweet to Your Followers
• Reply
• PUBLIC Response (Tweet) to Another’s Tweet
• Direct Message
• PRIVATE Response to Another User
• Favorites
• Saves a Tweet for Later Reference

7. When You Log In:
Home Feed
• See Tweets
From:
• People YOU
Follow
• You

8. When You Log In:
Interactions & Mentions
• See Who Has:
• Retweeted
You
• Favorited You
• Asked You a
Question
• Provided An Yes, Spam Accounts will Tweet you.
Answer to DON’T CLICK THE LINK!
Your
Question

9. When You Log In:
Your Information
• See:
• Your
Tweets
• Follow Info
• Favorited
Tweets
• Access
Direct
Messages

10. Getting Information:
Searching for People to Follow
Type a Name or
Username (if known)
Click to
Follow
Suggested People to
Follow Based on Who
You Currently Follow

11. Getting Information:
Searching a Hashtag
Type a Hashtag

12. Getting Information:
Searching a Keyword
Type a Keyword
Useful to search for info & reports from people who
know nothing about the state + wx hashtags!

13. Giving Information:
Sending a Tweet
Click to
Tweet
How Many
Characters You
Have Left

14. Giving Information:
Composing/Sending a Tweet
• Be Brief
• Grammar/Spelling Optional (within Reason)
• Use URL Shorteners for Links
• Be Descriptive
• Describe the Weather, not the Products
• Be Searchable
• Use Appropriate Hashtags
• Not All State Hashtags Appropriate for Every Tweet,
especially for Multi-State CWAs

15. Giving Information:
Replying and Retweeting
Mo
us e
ove
r Tw
e et

16. Twitter Tips and Best
Practices
A few things to keep in mind

17. Don't #OverHashtag
• Hashtags are most powerful when they are creative and
used judiciously
• There does not need to be a hashtag in each
tweet
• Too many can look like spam
• People will most commonly search for a hashtag for
things like events and interaction
• Random hashtags are rarely useful
Try not to have more than 1-2 per tweet

18. #HashtagTips
• Establishing hashtags for your local area can be useful
• Best to settle on one or two, rather than "spraying"
• Ask yourself: "Will it be understood? Is there a point?"
• Can jump on state hashtags (example: #ALwx) -BUT-
• State wx hashtags are getting overrun with bots
wx#AskXY
# dfw pared
#LAwe Z #I mPre
ather

19. Which Is Better?
#Rain and #snow may create a #wintrymix for #London this
afternoon. #UKwx #England #winter #SlipperyRoads
Rain and snow may create a wintry mix for London this
afternoon. Use caution if driving. #UKwx
• What ishashtag of some hashtag!hashtags?
the use of those
• Don't generallyjust to at random hashtags like
People don't look

20. Shoot For 120
Characters
• You CAN use as many as 140 characters.
• Less (100-120) allows room for quoted tweets and
manual retweets:
"@usNWSgov: [original tweet] "
RT @usNWSgov: [original tweet]

21. Don't Be Afraid To
Retweet
• Not everything we tweet has to be directly from us
• Feel free to retweet a local TV meteorologist, one of
your spotters, etc.
• Can respond to questions this way too:
[your answer] RT @AskerName: [original
tweet]
• Keeps people connected and involved - think social

22. Mentions
• Does the city or county you are tweeting about have a
Twitter account?
• Are you tweeting an image from an external website?
Does that organization have a Twitter account?
• Mentioning them in a tweet can get them involved!
• Example: A storm will approach @CityOfAlbanyGA
around 2 pm. Seek shelter indoors. #GAwx

23. Think Social!
• 23 WFOs that averaged at least 0.20 mentions per
tweet had, on average, 2063 followers (almost double
the NWS WFO average).
• 96 of the 117 WFOs we looked at (82%) had less than
4% of their tweets come from retweeted information
from others - area we can really improve!
• Involve your followers early and often, and then they will
be more likely to help when you need them.

24. Try Quotes
• Rather than linking to a long text product and assuming
people will get out of it what you intended...
• Try quoting important sections.
• Updated discussion: "conditions will become more favorable for
severe storms after 4pm"
• Quotes are simple and easy to understand. YOU get to
choose the most important message.
• Can also try quoting on the fly... Forecaster just now: "this
is one of the more favorable setups I've seen for severe weather
all year"

25. Simple &
Straightforward
Can be just as effective!

26. Time Sensitive
Information
• For things like a tornado approaching a city, consider
including a time in the tweet.
• Otherwise, people may retweet old information hours
after it was originally intended to be used.
[6:00pm] Confirmed tornado
approaching Anytown, State. This is a
Tornado Emergency!

27. Behind-The-Scenes
Looks
• Can provide a neat look at things we do to people who
are interested in it
• Can convey a message without you explicitly saying it
EXAMPLES
• Tweeting a picture of a forecaster setting up his radar
screens and WarnGen. (we could see severe storms)
• Preparing the radiosonde or balloon
• Measuring the snow depth

28. Careful Linking
Facebook
• Linking Facebook posts to go
directly to Twitter can create
truncated statuses.
• [Start of message] ... [link]
• People should be able to look
at your tweet and be able to
understand right away.
• Following a link on a truncated
tweet on a mobile app can
create screen like this (extra
step)

29. Automated Postings
• People are more inclined to tune out automated, bot, or
repetitive postings, even on Twitter.
• Avoid making your Twitter feed a dumping ground for
links to text products and Graphicasts.
• Can be more confusing than plainly stating it
Non-automated WFOs: 63% more followers, are
retweeted about 1.5 times more often, and
average more numbers of retweets.

30. Offices That Get The
Most Engaged Users...
• Avoid automatedto their followers
postings
• Mention or reply
• Retweet others tweet 3 times per day or more
• Stay active and and in plain language
• Keep excessively hashtag
tweets simple
• Don't

31. A Few Real Examples
Recent NWS Tweets

32. NWS
Norman
conducts a
"social
media
tornado
drill"

33. NWS Mobile
illustrates
how to RT to
give person
credit

34. NWS Tampa
Bay tweets out
a photo of a
waterspout
near
Downtown
Tampa

35. NWS Tallahassee retweets a
follower and TV meteorologist to
show a historical snow photo

36. NWS Chicago directly retweets
some interesting info from a local
TV meteorologist

37. Twitter #Fail
Twitter and other Social Media Fakes, Forgeries and
Frauds (and how to avoid them)

38. If it were only this easy…

39. Or this one…

40. But what about this one…

41. Or this one…

42. Or this one…

43. What about this one…

44. A little more recently…

45. A little more recently…

46. Ways an image can be fake

 Different location
 Different time
Manipulated by software (photoshop)

47. Photoshop

48. Photoshop

49. Photoshop

50. Real photo wrong time

51. Real photo wrong time

52. Real photo wrong time

53. Real photo wrong place

54. Real photo wrong place
Not: Yazoo City, MS
Not: Georgia Tornado
Not: Harrisburg Illinois
Not: Dallas Texas
It is: Orchard Iowa

55. What to do
• Think first before you hit retweet
• Try and trace the image back to its source
• Does it make sense and/or look right
• Are the photos topographic details correct
• Building
• Shadows
• Sun angle
• Time of day
• Weather

56. What to do
• Drop the image into Google image search
• http://images.google.com
• Do a Tineye image search
• http://tineye.com
• Look at the images meta data
• http://regex.info/exif.cgi or http://fotoforensics.com/
• Look for Photoshop tags
• http://pskiller.com
• Look for lists of fake photos
• http://owl.li/f6Hk3 (collection of Sandy related photos)

57. So how does this work

58. So how does this work

59. Fake Tweets and Status updates
From the New Yorker Magazine by Peter Steiner

60. Fake Tweets and Status updates
 In the last few months it has been tweeted:
 The death of actor Morgan Freeman.
 Teen sensation Justin Bieber’s cancer diagnosis
(and encouragement of head shaving in unity).
 Toy Story 4 coming in 2015.
 Tom Kenny (voice of Sponge Bob) has died
(again)
 Sharks swimming in the New York subway
system.
 Samsung paying the patent infringement damages
to Apple in change.
 The death of Bill Nye
From the Next Web by Lauren Hockenson
From http://wafflesatnoon.com

61. Hurricane Sandy and Twitter

62. Before the weather happens
 Use Twitter regularly
 Monitor multiple platforms
 Twitter for breaking news
 YouTube for videos
 Facebook/Google+ for more in depth
discussions
 Establish your place on the platforms
 Create a community
 Learn who you can trust

63. When a tweet of interest comes in
• Examine the twitter account profile
o Egg = bad (new account)
o Check how long they have been on Twitter
o Look over the older tweets
• Check the time of the tweet
• Check for photos (if available)
• Check for location (if available)
• Look for confirming tweets (not simply RT's)
• Check other Social Media platforms
• Contact directly
o Ask questions
o Ask for a photo
• What does your gut say
(is it too good to be true)

64. Twitter Resources
• What to Tweet about
o http://owl.li/jrPOG
• NWS Top Tweets
o http://owl.li/jrPR1
• Twitter Analytics
o http://twitonomy.com
o http://tweetreach.com
o http://rowfeeder.com
o http://crowdbooster.com
o http://twittercounter.com
Can't get to the SR SM Google Sites Page? Log into your NOAA email via Gmail. Then click on
"Sites" at the top of the page. Then on the left hand side of the page click on "Browse Sites". In the
word cloud that appears click on "Social Media". Now you can see both the SR and CR's SM Sites.

65. Questions?
Karen Hatfield NWS – TSA
karen.hatfield@noaa.gov Please take the SM training
@kahatfield
918-838-7838 ideas survey:
http://owl.li/jrXWU
Alex Lamers NWS – TLH
alex.lamers@noaa.gov
@alexjlamers
850-942-8833
Download this presentation:
Tim Brice NWS – EPZ
http://owl.li/jrQBS
tim.brice@noaa.gov
@timbrice17
575-589-4088