Twitter connects Australia’s journalists, opinion makers, politicians and activists, so it's a great platform to show the right people the huge community uprising for climate action.
Mainstream media and political staffers often track Twitter to see which issues are trending and which are boiling over.
When news breaks, news outlets also often feature eye witness photos and videos people share on twitter.
Getting started
You can sign up for a free account – just create a username (your twitter handle), add a profile pic and write a short bio about who you are or what you're interested in. You don't have to use your real name.
Follow people!
You can follow other people on twitter people you know in real life, organisations you support, journalists and news organisations you like, climate scientists, celebrities etc. This means you see the tweets they post in your feed. You can also find interesting people to follow by clicking on hashtags you're interested in.
Australian Conservation Foundation: @AusConservation
Greta Thunberg: @GretaThunberg
Stop Adani: @StopAdani
The Guardian Australia @GuardianAus
ABC News: @abcnews
NASA @NASAClimate
George Monbiot: @GeorgeMonbiot
Eric Holthaus: @EricHolthaus
Grist: @grist
Climate Desk: @ClimateDesk
Get tweeting!
Once you've set up an account, you can post short 'tweets' (updates of up to 250 characters) – deep thoughts, mundane observations, puns, rants, demands, links, photos of your lunch, videos. All tweets are public but only people who follow you can see them in their feeds. Like this one from our CEO Kelly:
Twitter lets you tweet at people using the @ sign beside their usernames: “Hello @twitter!” People will use your @username to mention you in Tweets, send you a message or link to your profile.
You can also click the reply button to publicly respond to a tweet. If you'd like to send a person you a follow a private message, you can direct message them.
Here's an example tweeting @ScottMorrisonMP (see our social media directory to find other decision-makers' usernames.)
You can also 'like' and 'retweet' tweets from other people to share them on your timeline with people who follow you. You can also retweet news articles, videos, petitions, photos etc.
If you want to tweet a thread of connected tweets, people can scroll through and read the whole thread, like this (click on this tweet from our nature policy analyst James to see the full thread):
#Hashtags
Twitter’s great for tracking topics or themes, grouped using the symbol # (hashtag). If you include a hashtag in your tweet, people who follow you can click on it and see all the other tweets using that same hashtag. It makes it easy for users to follow subjects and topics they're interested in.
When you're on twitter and Facebook, tag your posts with one of several of these key hashtags:
Some other hashtags to check out for ideas and inspiration:
#Reframegame – examples of 'fixed it' interventions
#ClimateHope – climate solutions and good news
#ClimateStories – People sharing their personal climate stories
#AusPol – Australian politics chat
If enough people use a hashtag or talk about a specific topic at the same time, it can start trending, so millions of people will see it.
Here's an example of an ACF tweet featuring three hashtags. Click on each hashtag and you'll see all the other times people have tweeted about it:
