📲 Follow and engage with others in the #womenintech / #witpgh community.
Twitter has changed the lives of so many who share their journey in tech and follow + engage with others in the Twitter tech community. Just check the tweet by @ParissAthena founded #BlackTechTwitter below.
The power of Twitter! I’ve tried doing this list on other platforms and it never worked. In a matter of 5 months on here, I:
— 🃏Pariss Athena⚔️ (@ParissAthena) February 2, 2019
Started a movement
Gained 8K followers
Made big connections
Got job & speaking opportunities
Went viral 4 times
And got on TV lmfao
GET👏🏽ON👏🏽TWITTER👏🏽
Twitter is especially great for:
- documenting your career journey to show others they can do it too
- online networking
- gaining new perspectives
- asking for direction or advice (people you’ve never met will literally stop what they are doing to offer their guidance!)
- meeting other #womenintech across the globe via the hashtag
- spreading awareness via retweets on important topics
- holding each other accountable to reach our goals
- sharing our accomplishments
- finding a mentor
- finding jobs
- most importantly celebrating our milestones and small wins!
But what do I post?!
First off, let’s get vanity metrics out of the way. Twitter has nothing to do with the number of followers you have. It’s about the value you bring, the journey you share, the obstacles you overcome, the projects you build, etc. And you have to give in order to receive.
But you don’t have any value you say? Yes you do. Everyone does – even if it’s failing! For example: if you fail at something, you extract the lesson to learn from it and then evolve into another version of yourself with this gained knowledge that you can pass on. Never be afraid to say you struggled or publicly learned! The point of a community is to not feel alone, and sharing your struggle let’s others know they are not alone. The value you bring here is the community, the connection and the guidance to help others that may be going through the same thing.
Okay, but why do I NEED to be on Twitter?
🎭 Twitter produces a ton of tech dialogue and plays a role in advancing women and other tech minorities in STEM on a global scale whether we realize it or not.
“[P]ublic opinion on Twitter often evolves rapidly and levels off quickly into an ordered state in which one opinion remains dominant. In true social media form, this consensus is often driven by the endorsements of larger and larger groups, which tend to have the most influence.” (An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 2014)
With this being the case, and knowing that only 20% of overall tech jobs are held by women I think it’s safe to say that the public opinion of the tech industry is not shaped in a very diverse way to represent individuals from swaths of different backgrounds and experiences. Not to mention that only 3% of computing positions are held by Black women, 5% are held by Asian women, 1% are held by Latina women and statistics for those who identify as non-binary do not even exist. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Therefore whether we like it or not, Twitter plays a role in how the industry appears and is molded in the minds of our society and younger generations. In some way, one could argue that we have a responsibility to make sure it’s molded in an appropriate fashion.
No go out and tweet like the industry depends on it! (Because it kind of does and you never know what kinds of cool opportunities will come your way.)