There is much talk around social-networking platform, Twitter, these days. The platform boasts more than 3-million members – and the Two Oceans Aquarium has now established itself as part of the growing Twitterverse. Here’s a look at what we’re doing as @2OceansAquarium, who we’re following and who is following us. And if there’s one golden rule we can share, it’s this: don’t waste anyone’s time (including your own).
Firstly, what’s all the fuss with 140 characters, or less? It’s ingenious, really and indicative of a growing modern trend towards bite-sized chunks of information being shared and re-shared at high speeds and frequencies across cyberspace and across the globe. Short messages like these – much like SMS – keep things concise and easy to digest.
It’s also a fantastic way to connect people across the world according to their interests and location.
Good Twitter practice definitely dictates that you only share worthwhile, useable information. You will quickly be unfollowed if you reveal the details of your breakfast menu, or the state of your toilet paper supply. Spam is a big no-no, as is tweeting too often.
We are using our Twitter profile – @2OceansAquarium – to keep followers informed about the happenings at the Aquarium, to tweet about our daily website updates and to retweet pertinent updates from the Twitterverse.
It’s also a great way for us to keep in touch with environmental agencies and aquarium-related experts from around the world – learning as much as we try to teach.
A few things we’ve learnt from those we follow:
• A critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley turtle was the first animal rescued after April’s catastrophic oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico (via @NWF – the USA’s National Wildlife Federation).
• How to dive responsibly around coral reefs (via @new_horizon; while this is an Australian tweeter, this is nonetheless need-to-know info for anyone diving near coral reefs).
• A major maritime mystery solved! We were very intrigued by the headline Ancient octopus mystery resolved (via @BBC_wildlife).
A few things we’ve shared with our followers:
• Tourism company Rhino Africa (@rhinoafrica) wrote an incredibly flattering blog post about us last week! We simply had to re-tweet this fantastic piece of exposure.
• Yoshi and Wasabi, the Aquarium’s resident turtles, were introduced.
• Still on the subject of turtles (they made a lot of news last week), we shared this news article about a recent loggerhead turtle rescue with our followers on Twitter.
• We got a mention from @gomagSA, the Twitter profile of South African travel magazine, Go!. They loved our Flickr blog post as well as the pictures our group members have been posting. Keep it up! The world is watching.
So far we’re following many of the world’s major aquariums, as well as causes that are close to our heart, like the Save our Seas Foundation (@saveourseas). We also like to keep an eye on Cape Town Tourism (@CapeTownTourism) to stay up-to-the-minute with all the latest happenings in Cape Town.
Get tweeting – we’d love to read your bite-sized insights.
