Before I even start to explain what I did for my Twitter Expert Connect assignment, I’m going to answer the first big question that you may be thinking. What the heck is “Twitter Expert Connect”? Twitter 
Expert Connect (or TEC, which is what I’m going to call it from now on) is a way for us to use social media (in this case Twitter) to connect with experts around the world and gather information about a topic we are researching. In this case, my classmates and I were gathering information about our new Genius Hour topics. If you don’t know what Genius Hour is, check out my previous Genius Hour blog post. And now that you know what TEC is, I can tell you about how I did mine.
The first thing I needed to do was actually find experts on Twitter to follow, and considering that Twitter has over a million users, that could have been difficult. Luckily, my tech teacher provided us with a list of teachers and their Twitter names so that we could narrow down our search. I ended up following @jguarr, @gphilli, @byperc, @musiced20, @reed_man, @Horizons93, @bliporto, @dougbutchy, @BandBob47, and @dalewitte. And I followed these ten because they all have one thing in common that I needed. They are all composers or music educators. I needed this because my Genius Hour topic is about music composition, so their knowledge would be very useful to me. But that is, of course, if they are willing to share with you.
A very important part of this project is not being creepy. This is important because social media is not like real life. if they think you’re creepy, they can just block you at the click of a button. So, you have to gradually build up your relationship just enough so that they know you’re legit and not a sketchy stalker. You do this by first following them. This is a good start. They’re not going to think you’re creepy by following them. Then start liking their tweets. This lets them now that you genuinely interested in their work. Then add them to a list and/or @ mention them in a retweet. This lets them know that you’re there and real. Also, being added to a list is or should be flattering, so that might make them like you, or at least not hate you!
Once you think that you have passed the “creepy” barrier, you can then ask them a question. Make sure your questions are carefully formulated, however. You want to ask a question that is personalized to them so that they don’t think you just copy and pasted it. To personalize it, take a look at some of their previous tweets and see what they were tweeting about, or look at their bio and that may give you some hints about their interests. It’s good to make a personal connection, like a similarity between both of you. Also, make sure your question is something that can be answered in the character limit of a tweet. You don’t want the person you are asking to have to answer with multiple tweets. It’s better to have a conversation with multiple questions that just throwing all your questions at them all at once.
I did all of this and I ended up with pretty good results. Four people ended up responding and I was able to get a sufficient amount of information. The people that did respond answered everything I asked, and even said they were happy to help if I needed further assistance. They didn’t follow me back, but that wasn’t really important to me. If the whole reason you are doing this is because you want more followers, forget it. 
I learned a lot from this experience; what I wanted to know and how to use Twitter as an educational; resource. I think I may use this tactic of gathering information in the future if I need to talk to an expert about a very specific topic, instead of just Google-ing it and ending up with ten million results in 0.4 seconds. But in the end, I got what I needed to know and hopefully, I will finish my 2nd Genius Hour project knowing something I didn’t before!
Works Cited:
http://www.stickpng.com/img/icons-logos-emojis/tech-companies/twitter-logo
Tan, Caleb. Twitter Photo. 18.30.32.png
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Tan, Caleb. Twitter Photo. 18.53.57.png