This is an introduction into social media for National Convention of the National Federation of the Blind–specifically Facebook and Twitter. We cover engagement tips and technical navigation of these two platforms that are fairly accessible for blind and low-vision people. A great way to engage during the convention is to share your experiences on social media.
Our official hashtag this year is #NFB22. If you are new to hashtags, a hashtag is using the # symbol in front of any word or phrase to tag your posts. It will then become a link within that platform. When someone clicks that hashtag, they will find all public posts that use that exact term.
Transcript
This is a transcript of the #NFB22 Social Media 101 recording from June 18, 2022.
STEPHANIE CASCONE: Welcome, everyone. This is the National Federation of the Blind Social Media 101 for #NFB22. I'm Stephanie Cascone. Thank you President Riccobono for joining, any words of inspiration for getting on social media.
MARK RICCOBONO: It's great to see so many people getting on NFB22. Be as social as possible. Some of you may not be able to be with us in New Orleans. We definitely want you to share out the great interactions that happen during convention. The organize the blind movement works because blind people commit to coming together to sharing with each other and to helping formulate a shared agenda. One of the things I call upon us to do is social media, and to once and for all answer the question of whether or not the internet is a place of public accommodations for blind people. After the public launch of the worldwide web, I think it's long overdue, and wouldn't it be great for us to use the web to help make that happen. So I'm glad that we're getting more people trained.
Thank you for being here, and let's go build the Federation.
Stephanie: Thank you so much. That was a perfect introduction to what we're going to be talking about tonight. With that, and social media is such a great way to connect and really advocate and get your experiences and your stories out there as well as engaging with each other, so really excited to build on that moving forward.
With that, the National Federation of the Blind is active on social media at the national level, through our divisions, through our affiliates, our groups and our committees, and we use it to interact on a lot of different focused topics that President Riccobono has already mentioned. And we really want more Federationists on social media. So hopefully this is a start to your excitement and participation on the platforms that you choose. Just know that you don't have to choose both platforms. Choose one that you're comfortable with. So we'll be covering two that we have the most engagement on so far. And we're excited to go over some of the tips and tricks for navigating on the two platforms, for Facebook and Twitter.
But before we get into the demonstration and overview of the platforms, we did want to connect with members who are on social media within the movement. So first we have tonight Liz Wisecarver, who is Chair of the communications committee of the National Federation of the Blind. She is here to share her experience with social media and how valuable it is staying engaged and informed.
So Liz, are you out there?
LIZ WISECARVER: I am here. Thank you. And good evening, everyone. I'm really glad to be joining you tonight. And super glad to see this training event for all of our membership to learn more about engaging in social media!
You know, I think social media is really a great equalizer. You don't have to be a journalist and you don't have to be a professional. You don't even have to spend any money to get on to social media and engage with thousands and thousands of people around the world and reach out to other blind people or people of influence to help share the message of the National Federation of the Blind. So I think social media and the internet in general are really inspiring in that way.
So I am the current Chair of the communications committee. And the communications committee is made up of members who help to work on social media and to share the message of the Federation, through all sorts of communication methods, but the good news is, you do not need to be on the communications committee to help share NFB messages and events and information online. You literally can just use your own personal social media accounts and follow some of the guidelines that our communications group is going to share this evening and use some hashtags and engage other people and let them know what's going on.
So a little bit about my social media experience. I've been on social media I guess since Facebook came out. I remember way back in the day when it was just for people who were in college. And Facebook and social media in general have really changed quite a lot over the years. Now you're able to share all sorts of pictures and links and polls and engaging things that can go viral and be able to see even statistics about how many people have shared the things you've posted or who is engaged with it, who has seen it. And depending on how tech savvy you are, you can even look at where these people are located and the types of folks who are engaging with your content that you share on social media.
I've been fortunate enough to learn a little bit about some of these things from using social media myself as someone who is interested in it, and then a bit professionally I've helped people prepare tweets or Facebook posts or manage their social media accounts. So that's been a fun job and thing that I volunteer to do for the Federation as well.
One thing that I would point out is, most of these platforms are accessible. And a good way to keep up with what kinds of things make them more accessible is by being engaged with other blind people who are using social media. I try to keep up with technology, but I'm not always the most technologically advanced, but I have a lot of other friends who are smarter than me who have all the newest toys and gadgets so I can see what kinds of ways they are interacting with social media, you know, which apps they're using to be able to cross post between Twitter and Facebook and how are they able to look at statistics when they post things and how do they set up ads. Even in you don't do that stuff, it's really great to have other blind folks around you who know more about technology so you can keep up with what's going on.
So why it's important to engage with social media, well, as we heard in the introduction, it's a way to share your message and get your information out there that you want people to know. We're able to do things like tweet at our senators and representatives when we're on the Hill during Washington Seminar, and we're able to tell them thank you in real time and be able to show other folks that hey, there's blind people going to Capitol Hill and they think these are important, and look, their representatives supported this. So you're able to share a lot of influence that way.
You're able to reach out to other blind people or families and teachers of blind people that don't know anything about the Federation and offer them some help or advice. I'm in a whole lot of different Facebook groups, technology groups, and information, and I mean I think almost every day there's someone who comes on and says my child is blind, we're not getting services, I don't know what to do, or someone comes on and says, I've just gone blind, I don't know what kinds of work I can do, what kind of technology people use, how they do things, and just because I'm on social media and I happen to see that post, I'm able to comment and say, hey, you might check out the National Federation of the Blind.
So it's important to be able to educate people on how blind people do things.
Social media is a great tool to keep up with what is going on in the National Federation of the Blind and the world in general. National Federation of the Blind shares links to things like the Braille Monitor, inspirational quotes from past Presidents and our current President, blog posts, things that may catch people's attention. And you can help by sharing those and engaging with them and just even by commenting. That will actually put those posts higher up where Facebook algorithms will recognize it and then more people are able to see it. But it's a way to keep your chapters engaged. If you're a chapter President, you may have a Twitter or Facebook group where you're able to communicate with some of your members that way.
Just to point out, I bet we will talk about this later tonight, but social media can help you engage your members as well. If you have someone in your chapter who is in to social media, ask them to help you or be responsible for doing the tweets during your events or sharing the live streaming on Facebook. That can really engage people and help them get involved and invested.
Before I leave -- well, I'm not going to leave. But before I turn over the virtual microphone, I did want to let you all know that the communications committee will be having a meeting at our national convention. It's going to be on Friday, July 8th, from 7:00-9:00 p.m. in studio 2. And we're going to talk about some of the different ways that you can use and engage with social media. But we're also going to talk about how do you reach out to folks who don't use social media or don't have computers. So we'll have a lot of interesting topics there that will kind of jump off of what we're discussing tonight. And again, you don't have to be a communications committee member to come to that meeting and you don't have to be a communications committee member to help spread the word about the NFB and to help promote our message on social media.
So I hope you guys will join us at the communications meeting, and thank you all for having me. Looking forward to the cool topics tonight.
STEPHANIE CASCONE: Awesome. Thank you so much, Liz. That was a really great overview and really helpful on so many points.
Great. So our next speaker tonight is another leader within the organization. Chris Walker is a very active member in the full Federation but he is from the National Federation of the Blind of Virginia. And so he is on both platforms, very active, and I know he is ready to support you all as you engage on these platforms. So with that, Chris, if you will share a bit about your experience in engaging on social media.
Chris, are you out there? You're not coming through just yet.
CHRIS WALKER: Thank you guys so much for letting me be part of this session and sharing my social media experiences as a chapter President here in Virginia for the Winchester chapter.
I know that when I joined my chapter, I wanted to do outreach and I wanted to be on social media. So I connected with the communications team to see how we could or I could or we could utilize the best way to communicate the message out from the national center through our affiliates, through our chapters. I'm going to feed a little bit off of what Liz said. A lot of the things she said we can also repeat and do within our chapters and divisions and groups.
So I definitely follow the National Federation of the Blind. I share out the Nation's Blind podcast. I share out presidential release from Mr. Riccobono, President Riccobono. All the things that I just really try to share out to chapters across the country, everywhere and anywhere that anybody will see it. I know we do have a Facebook page and a Twitter page for our chapter, and so a lot of things I see on the national level I share out on our page as well and I tweet out a lot of hashtags. I follow a lot of you on Twitter, so it keeps us engaged in what's going on. And what other activities and programming that we're all doing and being able to share out this information. And it's so important that we get more people active in doing social media, because that's the way that we can get out information and resources to those who have not found the National Federation of the Blind.
I know I share out to my groups about the National Federation of the Blind, about our chapter. I feel that any way we can bring in new members and let them know that they can live the lives they want, and a lot of them don't understand a lot of things. There's a lot of stories that we all hear. We're all different places. So social media has been a great way for me to really show and let people know that we care and that blindness is not going to hold us back. So yes, definitely encourage everybody to get on social media, because you do meet a lot of people, and I'm definitely looking forward to #NFB22 in New Orleans. We'll be there. And I hope that a lot of you will also join us. If you're not going to be there, join us on the virtual aspects of it through social media and emails and all these mechanisms that we have, the tools that the communications team can provide to the chapters and affiliates across the country.
So thank you again for giving me the opportunity, and let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.
STEPHANIE CASCONE: Great. Thank you so much, Chris. That was really great.
All right. So next we have in terms of engaging on social media, one of the things we do in addition to it is of course watch out for accessibility issues. I know it's already been mentioned that the platforms are fairly accessible. However, we know that bugs happen as well as learning to navigate through some of the accessibility issues that may be there. So tonight we have Matt Hackert, one of our members of our CENA or access tech team at the National Federation of the Blind to talk about how we work with Twitter and Facebook to make sure they are inclusive and accessible.
So Matt, are you there?
MATT HACKERT: Hi, Stephanie. Can you hear me?
STEPHANIE CASCONE: Yes. Sound great.
MATT HACKERT: Excellent.
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you to Danielle and Stephanie for inviting me here. I'm really excited. This will be my seventh convention, so I'm kind of newer to conventions than some folks around here, but I'm real excited to be working in access technology with these powerful tools that we do have to make our voices heard.
So couple of points that I was asked to talk about. First, as Stephanie mentioned, what do we do when a bug is reported to us or when we discover a bug? Although I have to say more often than not it's reported to us by other people. I think I'm kind of on the back end of that generational gap that I haven't adopted social media as much as some people have younger than myself. But still, I try to get out there and amplify the messages from @NFBVoice.
The first thing we always try to do is see if we can replicate the problem. Especially when our members report things to us. What's especially helpful is to get as much information as we can from you about exactly what you're using. Is it on a desktop computer? Are you using JAWS? Are you using NVDA? Are you using Magnifier? Are you using Voiceover? Which platform is it? Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or what have you? What browser are you using? Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari? Chrome's browser on a Chromebook maybe? That helps us to identify exactly what the problem is so we can better try to replicate it and understand what the issue is. And if we can replicate the problem, if we can reproduce it, then of course the next step is to report that to the social media platform, be it Facebook or Twitter or whoever. That's usually the case. Sometimes it turns out the problem is based elsewhere, so we have to kind of make that determination. That's not always easy. But sometimes it turns out that an accessibility bug shows up in one of the clients that you might use. So without getting into too much of the technical, when you're on Windows, you can be on the website and access Twitter, but you can also use programs like TWBlue and Chikn Nuggit. And there's just a whole myriad of clients that you can use which are standalone applications.
But anyway, how can someone report a bug is another good question. Of course as I mentioned, a lot of bugs get reported to us. And it's actually pretty easy to do that. We can be reached, the access technology team at the national office, can be reached by email. That's [email protected]. And you can also reach us by phone. You can call the national office (410)659-9314, and option 5 I believe from the main menu will get you to the access technology team. And one of us will either answer or if we're all engaged in things, it may go to our voice mail. But please leave us a message and a way to reach you so that we can get all of the information that you can provide us, and someone will try to call you back. We really try to get back to everybody within 72 business hours.
So those are some ways that you can report bugs to us.
In addition, though, what's really helpful for the companies themselves like Twitter and Facebook is for people to report errors directly to them. And both platforms have links on their websites to their accessibility teams. Twitter I know off hand has I think it's Twitter -- sorry. @twittera11y. A11y is a common abbreviation you'll see on social media that stands for accessibility. Accessibility is an 11-letter word. And a and y are the first and last letters so they cut it down to a11y. Twittera11y is Twitter's handle for their own accessibility team. You can actually direct message that handle in Twitter and report bugs that way.
What can be good about reporting directly to the company itself is if we have multiple people reporting the same bug, that's a good way to kind of bring it forefront in their attention. So in other words, the more people that are seeing this, they realize, oh, this might actually be a serious problem that we should look at fixing. So that's I think the best way. So those two options: Contacting the company directly and going through us. One of the things that we do is try to foster relationships with a lot of the big tech companies, and one thing that we are able to do is filter that information to the most relevant things that they need to know so that they can address the problem. And they know that if NFB access technology team is coming to them, it's in the spirit of partnership because we want those platforms to be the best that they can, not only for the selfish reasons of wanting blind people to use them, but for helping the companies themselves too.
So about my experience on social media as a blind person. As I've said, I think I'm kind of the older side of that generational divide. I'm not as active on social media, but I do have a Facebook account. I do have a Twitter account. And I definitely use those to retweet messages that the NFB account tweets as well as leaders in accessibility, leaders in some of the divisions and other parts of leadership of the organization. When I see them tweet about things that are important for blind people, I think it's really great to show my support for that message as well as -- and we'll probably talk about this a little further, but as messages get retweeted, the algorithms are more likely to catch those items and that's how items trend so people can see those more.
So definitely have gotten used to using the convention hashtag. So excited about #NFB22. And really looking forward to seeing everybody who will be there in person in New Orleans in a couple weeks!
Stephanie, I'll go ahead and turn things back over to you.
STEPHANIE CASCONE: Awesome. Thanks so much, Matt. And I love how you didn't give yourself credit for being on social media a lot but you threw out a lot of social media buzz words there or terminologies, so hopefully folks will learn more about those. Trending, algorithm, handle, hashtags, all like social media terminology that you'll hopefully come away with knowing a little bit more about. So Matt you should give yourself more credit on the social media venture there.
So great. Well, thank you so much to Liz, Chris, and Matt for sharing your experiences as well as other great information on how we can engage on platforms as Federationists.
So now we're going to transition to the overview of both the platforms for Twitter and Facebook. So we'll give information about both. There's some differences that you'll want to learn about and make a decision on which one may be more comfortable for you and we'll also have a small demo of each creating a post. So with that, I am going to pass it over to Danielle.
DANIELLE McCANN: Hey, everybody. Stephanie, can you hear me?
STEPHANIE CASCONE: Yes. Sound great.
DANIELLE McCANN: Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Welcome everybody again. Thank you so much for joining us. So looking forward to connecting with you at #NFB22, whether you're going to be there in person or virtually. And there might be someone out there thinking, but Danielle, you guys keep saying this word hashtag. What does that even mean? No worries, we got you, we're going to explain this.
Let's start out with Twitter. The idea behind Twitter is to say what you're thinking very concisely within 280 characters or less. Not 280 words as I frequently try to squish into tweets. 280 characters. So it's more a one-sentence thought or it's a call to action. "Write to your Senators!" Or "Check out the Braille Monitor." That kind of thing. That's the way that you're going to post on Twitter. So if you want to tell a story, you may need about 76 tweets to do that, but if you have something concise and quick to say, Twitter is where you want to do that.
So a couple of vocabulary words that we're going to learn. A follower. A follower. You may have heard the term like oh, that's my friend on social media. A follower on Twitter is equivalent to a friend on Facebook, if you will. So they follow you on Twitter, and they see all of the tweets that you put out on your home feed. And your home feed is going to be where all of your tweets show up. And you can follow people back and then on your home feed, it will be populated with their tweets. So it can be things like McDonald's or like my friend Karen Anderson, if I follow her and I want to see the tweets that she's putting out there, I'm going to go ahead and follow her on Twitter, she's going to follow me back, and we'll see what each other is doing.
To retweet. Sometimes you'll see it abbreviated as RT. So that's just to share what someone tweeted. So let's say that Stephanie Cascone tweets a quote that I really like. I can retweet that quote. And that's showing support like yes, I like this, I agree with it, I'm going to share it. And then as Matt mentioned, the algorithm, which is all those behind the scenes formulas that are on social media that present the content to you that you most engage with. So if I engage with yarn, if I'm constantly retweeting or sharing yarn content, then my algorithm will say, hmm, she likes yarn, let's show her more of that. It will show me more content from people that I might not follow as an option to say, hey, we notice you like yarn, they talk about yarn, why don't you connect with them. And that's how your circle grows on Twitter.
Now, hashtag. Hashtag is the pound symbol if you're on a computer keyboard, that shift 3. So you would put that in front of a phrase. For example, #NFB22. And that hashtag creates a sort of -- hmm. It's a grouping of content. So on Twitter it's a grouping of tweets that all use that same hashtag. So they're grouped together. You can search on the hashtag. And in Twitter, there's filters you can search through, like most popular, latest, and that kind of thing. So you'll see, let's say President Riccobono tweets a welcome to #NFB22 and he gets 100 people to engage with it. That will be one of the most popular tweets for #NFB22 so you'll see it when you search for it. You wouldn't put a space between the hashtag and the N. It's all smashed together. You also don't want punctuation within your hashtag because it will break the formula and it won't work. So just a couple things to be mindful of.
Alt text for images. This is super important because it's allowing for people who are blind to be able to interact with pictures on Twitter. And actually on all social media platforms but right now we're talking about Twitter. When you're composing a tweet that includes an image, make sure that you add alt text. Alt text is also known as a description. So if I have a picture of a blanket that I'm crocheting, I'm going to put up a picture, and right within the Twitter composer, there is an option to add alt text to my image. So I'm going to describe that image.
All right. So if you're using the Twitter app on your iPhone or Android, it is pretty accessible. Things like TWBlue and Chikn Nuggit are good if they're maintained and there are third party options, but we definitely are pushing for the platforms themselves to be accessible and be developed in an accessible way as the platforms grow in their functionality. So Stephanie, if you could please play, we're just going to play a description of how to would sound using iPhone with Voiceover. So you can see it sounds like to create a tweet.
Actions available, what's happening, insertion point, tango, 2, echo. Shift. Numbers.@. Number sign. Shift. Foxtrot. Bravo. 2. 2. Exclamation. Hashtag space. Capital Charlie, alpha, India.
Twitter notification: Your tweet was sent.
DANIELLE McCANN: Awesome. Thank you, Stephanie. So that's just a very quick overview of what it would sound like to create a tweet using the iPhone app. And so then that way there in the tweet I said, T minus 2 weeks until #NFB22. I can't wait. So now because I used the hashtag, others will be able to see the tweet and engage with it, whether to like it, giving it a thumbs up, you like it, or by sharing it by retweeting. Or adding a comment saying, hey, I can't wait either. Or something like that.
So now we're going to go ahead and move over to Facebook. Facebook is arguably the most popular platform on social media. There is no character limit for posting what's on your mind. So you can customize posts with things like your location and how you're feeling. Now, as I mentioned before, on Twitter you have followers. On Facebook you have friends. So when you friend someone, you're going to be able to keep up with what they're posting. In addition you can join groups on Facebook. They're related to things that you're interested in.
You can also follow what's called a page. Now, we have a page. So if you were to search on Facebook, it's National Federation of the Blind. So our Facebook page is an outward-facing page, companies and organizations use pages because they're open. So where a group can have privacy settings where you have to, let's say you have to answer questions to join the group or there may be some screening questions to make sure that they want you in their group, pages are public. So anyone can follow the page. Anyone can interact with what goes out on the page.
So, again, our name on Facebook is National Federation of the Blind. And then also a lot of our affiliates, a majority of our affiliates, our divisions, some of our groups all have pages as well, so definitely check them out as well so you can see what's going on in some of your other affiliates. You might get some good ideas for content. You might get some thoughts on fundraising ideas, that kind of thing. And then you're building community with fellow Federationists.
Now on Facebook, when you're scrolling through what's called your news feed, so your news feed is your home page. So when you scroll through there, the accounts that you friend and follow, so if you have friends on your Facebook, and then the pages that you follow and the groups that you follow, it's all going to be presented to you on your home page. So from there you can do things again like "like" the post. Visually the sign for liking is just giving it a thumbs up. There's also other reactions that you can scroll through and choose through. You can love it, laugh at it, care about it, things like that. You can be angry at it and sad at it as well. So there are far more options on Facebook to interact in a more customized way. Whereas Twitter just gives you the "like" option, the reply option, and the retweet option. So it's a little bit more robust, but there you can get very detailed.
If you're using an iOS or Android phone, you should download the Facebook app. If you're using Facebook on a computer, it would be Facebook.com. Alternatively, you can use the website m.facebook.com, which gives you a lighter experience. M is for mobile. There are fewer actions to interact on there as you would get with the full site, but there are easier screens to navigate through and then more obvious options on the m.facebook.com. But again, we're pushing for those platforms to be accessible as they evolve.
So one feature that Facebook has is called Facebook Live, and it's where you can go live. For example, we did a live video when the world record was broken in March. We were live on Facebook, broadcasting kind of like how on the news you would have breaking news and they interrupt your favorite TV show to show you something that's happening in your community. It's like that but it's on Facebook. And so there may be times during the convention where we will go live, and you will be able to watch and comment in real time. So for example, if we go live during opening ceremonies at convention and you want to say, hi, everyone, I'm watching from Wyoming! You're able to comment and interact with others watching that video live. It's another way to connect with each other even if you're not in person.
We'll definitely keep you posted on the times we expect to go live as often as we can so that if you're not able to join us in person or even if you're there in person and you're hanging out in your room or you're not in the event space where we're broadcasting from, you'll have that heads up. So if you want to go ahead and follow us on Facebook, we are National Federation of the Blind.
We also have a demo of posting on Facebook. So Stephanie, if you could please play the demo.
Screen reader: Facebook, messenger, picture, create post, hidden, choose privacy, friends, hidden, post to album, cross postings, what's on your mind. Photo slash video. Black screen with white text. What's on your mind. Insertion point. I can't wait to be in New Orleans for #NFB22. Danielle McCann, choose privacy, background options, photo slash video, tag people, feelings slash activity, hidden, happy, excited. Post.
DANIELLE McCANN: Awesome. Thank you so much, Stephanie.
All right. So we have a few questions that were submitted to us in advance, but if you have questions for us, Karen Anderson is actually monitoring the chat. So if you would like to put your questions in the chat, we'll try to get to as many as possible tonight. And then also if you're not able to use the chat, you can go ahead and raise your hand and we'll take questions.
So I'll just give you a minute to go ahead and think about some questions, and I'll start with one that we received earlier today.
So someone did send an email and asked: What happens if I create a Twitter account and I'm not able to get back in because Twitter is saying that my user name isn't correct.
There are a few different things you could do there. You could use your email address to sign in. You could search for emails in your inbox from the first few that Twitter sent you, because in order to create an account, you would have had to create a user name. So maybe you would be able to find it there. And worse comes to worst, and it's not the ideal option, but you would just have to create a whole new account using a different email address. So thank you to the person who submitted that question.
And Karen, are we seeing any?
KAREN ANDERSON: We do have one hand raised. Sherria. Let me go ahead and unmute you.
SHERRIA: Hello, everyone. Great presentation so far. One question I do have is with Facebook, it says cross postings. So I never knew what that meant. And I was like, I don't want to do anything wrong so let me just find out what this means.
DANIELLE McCANN: Yeah, that's a great question. So cross posting, for example from the -- I also have an Instagram account. So when it's asking me if I want to cross post it, it's asking if I want to also post it to my Instagram account. So that's what it means. So if you have other social media accounts linked to your Facebook account, it shows you that option to say like hey, do you want to put this out somewhere else. So that's what that means.
And just a side note that, you can control all sorts of privacy settings. Like if you want your other accounts linked or not. That's in the settings menu on Facebook. It's a very long, very detailed menu, so you can find all those settings there. Thank you for your question, Sherria.
KAREN ANDERSON: We have a question from John.
JOHN: Hello. So what groups are you posting in on Facebook? You didn't seem to mention that during your demo. What groups were you in?
DANIELLE McCANN: Oh, sorry about that. So that's a good question. So I was just posting on my time line. I wasn't posting in a group per se. But from our account from the National Federation of the Blind account, we post just to our page. So everything is visible, it's not within any particular groups. It's just done on our public page. I hope that clears it up.
KAREN ANDERSON: Next question from Kristen.
KRISTEN: Thank you. My question is about Facebook and the business page type thing. If you know anything about that. I'm an artist and I would love to be able to put my wares out there, so to speak, and reach a lot of the blind community. But I wasn't sure if there's a separate way to do that other than your regular social page. Thank you.
DANIELLE McCANN: Yeah, you're welcome. So that's a very, very good question. There are a few different ways you would be able to post your art page. If you wanted to create a business page, probably the easiest way to do that is to create your business page on Facebook and then toggle between posting to your page as a business and your personal Facebook news feed. There are third-party social media softwares that you would be able to use. They're not the most accessible platforms. But if it's something that you want to research, you would just have to Google things like social media post manager or social media page manager, and you would get tons of results. But the easiest way would be to create that business page and toggle between which account you post to, your business or personal.
Thank you.
KAREN ANDERSON: The next question is from Tina. Let me get an unmute request to you, Tina. Just one moment. There you go.
TINA: Thank you. This is actually a really, really good -- this has been a good seminar. Is this going to be available if someone came in late or whatever, is this going to be available on the website for viewing or listening to later?
DANIELLE McCANN: Hey, Tina, we are recording the seminar, so we will definitely make it available in the future.
TINA: That's great. This was good information tonight and your demos really shed some light. And by the way, just as a tip for anyone that is doing any kinds of posting on Facebook and if you're going to be doing long typing, I think that a Bluetooth keyboard is a good tool to have on hand because if you're really wanting to type accurately, a Bluetooth keyboard is great to have on hand.
DANIELLE McCANN: That's a good point.
We do have a question in the chat. He is wondering, this is Elijah from Florida, and he's wondering what are some tips to make Twitter more accessible as a newcomer to Twitter.
DANIELLE McCANN: Thanks for the question. Welcome to Twitter.
As Matt mentioned earlier, the best way to make, if you're encountering accessibility issues with Twitter, the best way to address those is to definitely let our access tech team know, and then also let Twitter know. So if you tweet at that handle @twittera11y, just to let them know. If you're having trouble getting used to the platform, can you call us for tips. And if you know other blind people in your areas, and we ask them if they use Twitter and how they navigate it.
Thank you again for the question.
KAREN ANDERSON: We have a question from Julie. Julie, you should have a request to unmute.
JULIE: Yes, I am here. I tried to use Twitter several years ago. I've not tried it with an iPhone or anything like that. But several years ago a friend of mine wanted me to try it. And so I did. And she followed me or I followed her. But and I could see her messages but I couldn't figure out how to send messages to her. Can you send private messages or you put something on Twitter and it's just out there and if people want to follow you, they do?
DANIELLE McCANN: So thank you. Good question. So both. The answer to your question is both. When you put things out on Twitter, when it says compose a tweet, you're composing it for everyone to see unless your account is private. If your account is private, then only the people who request to follow you will be able to see your posts. There is a tab on the Twitter app. There is also a link for it on the website that's called direct messages. If you go into the direct messages area, then you're able to send private messages to people who have messaged you or who you would like to message. The only caveat to that is if they're not accepting messages, like if you have to request to message them and they don't write you back, that's the only thing that would prevent you from messaging them. So thank you.
KAREN ANDERSON: Next question is from Erica.
ERICA: Hi there. Can you discuss the importance of engaging and not necessarily always liking or hearting, just because I know you all mentioned the algorithm.
DANIELLE McCANN: So engagement means liking the post, like you had mentioned, but also commenting on it, meaning starting a conversation about the post in the comments field typically found below the post. The more conversation that happens under a post, the more people the algorithm says, oh, this conversation is hopping; let's go ahead and show it to more people. So it really expands the reach of what is posted.
Karen, do you have anything to add to this one? You engage a lot on social media.
KAREN ANDERSON: I think the important thing to remember is that the goal of social media is to be social. And being social is more than just like smiling and waving at somebody on the street. It's engaging with them, talking with them, it's finding out why they're talking about what they're talking about in a conversation. And so that's what the algorithm is looking for. So the more you actually engage by talking, by asking or answering questions, the more likely that post is to be shown in your algorithm. So engaging especially on our various pages and channels helps us get more reach. Really great question, Erica.
KAREN ANDERSON: We have a question from Ilire.
ILIRE: Hi, guys. So I had a question about the hashtag, #NFB22. So I notice that when you, Danielle, were making your voiceover demonstration, you had posted your privacy settings were set to friends. So I wonder if you post something that says can't wait for hashtag NFB 22 and your privacy settings were set to friends, would your post show up if I were to follow the #NFB22?
DANIELLE McCANN: That's is a really good question. I have to go change my privacy settings. On Twitter, if you tweet something and it's private and you use the hashtag, it won't show up under the main conversation. That's an excellent question. Thank you for catching that.
KAREN ANDERSON: Very nice. We have one last question. Do we have time for it?
DANIELLE McCANN: Yeah, we have time. While you're getting that person cued up, is it a --
KAREN ANDERSON: It is 13478.
DANIELLE McCANN: Okay. While you're sending that unmute request, I just wanted to say that we have a lot of questions too that we got from the email so we'll do our best to answer them but thank everyone if we didn't get to your question.
13478: Hello. My name is Hope and I have a question. I'm going to be heading to New Orleans for the convention and I wanted to know what's the best way to communicate with like JetBlue since I'm flying down on JetBlue and everything has been going on with the airlines and all that stuff. What is the best way to communicate with airlines just in case it's canceled or delayed? Thank you.
DANIELLE McCANN: Yeah, you're welcome. Well, hopefully nobody's flights get canceled and it's smooth travel for everyone. But if that happens, you can certainly reach out to them on social media. I've seen in most instances when you do reach out to them on social media, they direct to you their customer service lines anyway. So it's probably more streamlined to go ahead and just reach out via their customer service, whether it's the reservations desk or if your flight gets canceled, they may send an email saying give us a call at this number or send us an email at this address. But certainly feel free to reach out to them on social media too. If you need to get their attention. That's a good question. I do that sometimes too, so very good question.
KAREN ANDERSON: Danielle, the other thing I've seen a lot of airlines request is to download their app. I can't speak to the accessibility of JetBlue. I'm a Southwest girl myself. But I know a lot of airlines, especially with the shortages of staff, are requesting and suggesting that people download their app. So that might be another thing to give a shot to.
DANIELLE McCANN: Yeah, I'm a Southwest girl myself too. Love it.
KAREN ANDERSON: And they do engage on social.
DANIELLE McCANN: They really do. Yep.
KAREN ANDERSON: That is all the questions we have in the chat and with hands raised right now, Danielle. Looks like perfect timing.
DANIELLE McCANN: Awesome. Thank you so much, Karen, for moderating.
All right. So we're going to go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you again for joining us tonight. And I did want to mention too, if you have questions, if you need maybe a little bit more information or want to do some one on one Q&As with me, I am going to go ahead and have some office hours next week Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 6:30-9:00 p.m. Eastern. The way to go ahead and make that appointment, they will be 15-minute increments. The way to go ahead and schedule a meeting would be to email me [email protected] or can you give me a call at (410)659-9314 extension 2246. I'm happy to talk with you. We'll go ahead and hopefully connect with you during those times, and if not, we'll see you on social media whether you're in person at convention or joining us virtually! So thank you very much, everyone.
STEPHANIE CASCONE: Thank, Danielle. Thanks, Karen. Thank you so much for hosting. And thanks to our speakers tonight. This has been a really great night as we anticipate national convention in 2 weeks. So have a great night, everyone.