I’ve always loved scavenger hunts. They have the power to make anyone feel like they’re an ambitious adventurer with much to discover.
This past Wednesday, in my Social Media for Public Relations class, we participated in a Twitter scavenger hunt on our campus at St. Edward’s University. This was an exciting energy-charged assignment that was quite enjoyable. As a class, we got into smaller groups of about two or three students and we were instructed to be “journalists” on the social networking site, Twitter.
For the scavenger hunt part, we were given a list of questions regarding our school and how others on campus felt about social media. We recorded the responses we got from students and professors on Twitter with links to photos, hashtags, and twitter handle mentions, using the site the way journalists actively use it today.
This was a great opportunity to learn. While I learned more about my school through the views of students and professors on campus, I also learned more about Twitter just by simply using it.
The scavenger hunt is also being done by other journalism/public relations courses at other schools and universities, so using the hashtag “#JRLWeb” was a great way to get our tweets to actively be a part of the scavenger hunt. This allowed other students from other schools who were also participating in the hunt to view our tweets and interact with us via comments. Interacting with other students was a requirement for this assignment, but doing so helped with building our own networks on Twitter.
After the assignment, I noticed that I gained a couple of followers that I probably wouldn’t have stumbled upon before. Some of these followers are students like myself and they tweet about advertising, journalism, and PR like I do! So of course, I returned the favor and followed them too.
It’s great to be able to stay connected with people that are interested in what I’m interested in, and doing what I do. With our technology today, Twitter is the best way to be informed about interests, individuals you can relate to, and breaking news. If you want to know what’s the scoop, you better tweet to stay in the loop!
I agree. This assignment was hands-on and quickly became familiar with using Twitter as a journalist would. I too gained a few new followers from using the hashtag #JRLWeb and even got an @reply from a UT journalism student. It certainly helped my twitter community grow!
Thanks for your feedback! I’m glad you can relate! I bet receiving an @reply from a UT student was exciting to see. I wish that was me! 😛 I thought the scavenger hunt assignment was fun, but there’s just something awesome and empowering about how it helped grow our own Twitter network. Hope all continues to go well for you on Twitter! Happy Tweeting 🙂