FreshNetworks Blog

Lots of people I meet and talk to worry about how they should speak in social media – what their, or indeed their brand’s, tone of voice should be. They recognise that social media is different – structurally (Twitter requires you to express yourself in no more than 140 characters), and in the nature of what you write and how you write it. Online communities and social media allow people who don’t know each other to share thoughts, ideas and information. They need to write and express themselves in a way that builds trust and exchanges information and this impact on the language you use and indeed your use of other tools, including video and images. Overall social media requires you to express yourself in a different way to spoken language or much written language. And brands and individuals needs to go thorough a learning process to develop their own tone of voice.

One of the best ways to get used to the type of language and tone of voice you should be using in social media is just to experiment and have a go. Twitter is a particular useful tool in this regard. It forces you to think about what you want to say (and express it in just a few words) and allows you to try engaging with other people and joining conversations. And above all, Twitter is quite a forgiving environment. It is moving and changing so quickly, and there are so many conversations and updates every day, that if you try something and it doesn’t quite work then you can quickly find yourself back with a relatively blank canvass to start again.

That’s why we encourage our clients to each experiment with Twitter themselves personally if they want to get used to social media and to start to really understand the benefit it can bring to their brand. And it’s why I have been delighted to discover @ClassroomTweets.

What we can learn from @ClassroomTweets

The six year old students in the Orange Class at Holy Trinity Rosehill school in Stockton-on-Tees in the North-East of England are on Twitter. The students tweet as @ClassroomTweets, sharing their thoughts and experiences every day in the classroom. They are able to update Twitter from a computer in the classroom that shows Twitter at all times. And their tweets are unmoderated by teacher @MultiMartin apart from a few sensible rules, including not being able to respond to messages or talk to other people on Twitter without a teacher present. Some of the things we learnt from @ClassroomTweets this week included “it is high school musical week”, “wow this class is very fun” and perhaps my favourite of the week “we are not doing spelling”.

The updates are a great way for students in the classroom to express themselves, and to get used to using social media and so experiment with new ways of expressing themselves and improve their literacy skills. But, as @MultiMartin says on his blog it is also a useful source of insight:

It’s extremely interesting to read as the class teacher. For example, I’ve learned that my class only class a ‘literacy lesson’ as the time I am teaching from the front of the class – they believe the time they are at their desks working isn’t classed as ‘literacy’ or indeed a lesson.

The use of Twitter is benefiting both the students in the classroom, the teacher and of course everybody who follows them and who’s day is brightened by hearing what they are doing. It is a great learning tool for everybody and a great way to experiment with social media.

There is something we could all learn here. Just start using social media. Learn how to express yourself, what works for you and what doesn’t. Report on your life, or on something that you are interested in. The subject doesn’t matter really because you are just using Twitter as a way to learn about social media, the way you use it and how to express yourself in it. There is a lot we can learn from these six year olds. And many of us could benefit from experimenting with social media in the way that they are doing.