Last month we launched the University of Bath on twitter.

Managed by our Corporate Communications team, it initially featured news updates relating to our research and events. We didn’t do an ‘official launch’; we simply set up the account and let people find and ‘follow’ it. With this ’soft’ (and purely viral) approach we saw the number of Twitter followers rise to 86 on Wednesday evening. Not bad for something we just ‘put out there’.

Whilst Twitter is becoming more mainstream (due to mentions from high profile celebrities and the BBC) it is still difficult to explain what value it adds. We generally advise that you have to use it to really understand it and as it has no rules and people use it for different reasons, it’s difficult to really define what ‘it’ is. It ‘is’ a microblogging tool but what it gives you as an individual really depends on how you use and engage with it.

Luckily this week our Communications Team (and indeed ourselves) really got to see the value in it. Yesterday Bath experienced heavy snow fall. The bus and train services ground to a halt and as a result the University closed. During the morning the Communications team posted messages and updates on our internal homepage AND on Twitter. Alongside this the Customer Services team at Bath Bus Station updated their own Twitter account with the latest news on the buses. Both streams of information proved invaluable and as the day went on the number of ‘followers’ increased.

An announcement was made on the internal homepage mid-afternoon advising staff and students about the account and since then the number of followers has risen further – as I write we have 240 people following the account. It also looks like many students have signed up to Twitter simply to ‘follow us’.

So what have we learnt?

There is clearly a need for this short, sharp, timely information. Twitter appears to be filling a gap. Yes people can check out our homepage but with Twitter we are delivering information directly to the people who are interested.

My colleague Andy Male suggested “for me it demonstrates that people need a really compelling reason to follow you in the first place”. The account has proved really valuable because information about whether the campus is open or closed IS really valuable. Will those same people who’ve started following @UniofBath now still be interested when we revert back to publishing news about research? This is something we’ll need to consider.

When the snow has melted and we’re back on campus we’ll have to sit down and reflect on what Twitter does for us and how we’ll use it in the future. But for now we’re glad we got it and we’d advise any University not on-board already to consider its use for emergencies (if nothing else).

Follow @UniofBath.

Edited to add:

Want to learn more about Twitter? Read the BBC article ‘Talking Twitter’