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3 Ways to Track Coronavirus News on Twitter

Hey folk, just wanted to share a very basic introduction and look into how to follow news on Twitter. For some of you this will be blindingly obvious but I've found plenty who still crave the basics.

My background - I spent nearly a decade working in social media newsgathering for companies like CNN, Al Jazeera and Dataminr. When it comes to social search if it's out there, I'll find it.

I plan on doing a series of these posts and gradually go more in depth. If you're interested in knowing more you can join our mailing list or check out the free coronavirus dashboard we've built.

Anyway! On to the content.

Number 1 - Your Timeline
This one seems obvious because well, it is. You generally put together these sources over a long period of time, following new accounts when you notice a few good bits of information.

In this case I’d follow respectable handles like @CDCgov, @WHO or top journalists you trust.

Number 2 - Lists
A Twitter list is literally a list of Twitter accounts that have been grouped together so that you only see the content that comes from them and no one else. Lists are awesome but probably aren’t as popular as they should be because they can be quite time consuming to put together.

One of the most basic and best methods for list building is simply finding an account you respect, let’s take @NYCHealthSystem as an example. View their profile and click on “Lists” and then click on “Member”.

Now you should see pages of lists that other people have already curated involving this account. If there’s a particularly good public list here, you can just subscribe and be done. But I tend to explore a few lists and start compiling my own list using the members of all their lists.

Number 3 - Keyword Searches
Hashtags and trends are smart for joining conversations and taking part on Twitter as a whole. But what about if you want to get in on the good stuff before it trends?

The key here is to think outside of yourself as the consumer of the tweet, and think how the creator would phrase something and build your search based on that.

Conclusion
If there's much interest (hope there is!) I can really start to dive into the trade tricks. Product wise, I'll be putting together another free localised version of Socialwise for people effected in NYC and London. And more to come.

Hope this is interesting! Full blog post if you're curious.

Jack

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