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A significant amount of my social networking happens via my Twitter account, which as of spring 2015 had over 800 followers.
I joined Twitter in Oct. 2011, doing so primarily for professional purposes. Most of the people I follow are rhetoric and composition scholars, and tweeting and reading their tweets allows me to keep up with relevant disciplinary and professional issues. For instance, I presented on MOOCs at the 2014 symposium of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, and—especially given the quick pace of MOOC news and research—Twitter was an invaluable source of links for me (cf. this story, which I found and retweeted via a former DWRL member). In an attempt to keep my Twitter ethos professionally relevant while resisting stodginess, I also tweet bad puns related to rhetoric and rhetorical theory, such as a series of facetious dissertation titles that I posted early in my Twitter career. Though these tweets were silly, they also provided me with a framework that kept me checking Twitter regularly.
I also spent AY 2012-13 managing Zeugma‘s Twitter account. While managing that account, I focused primarily on building an audience (my personal list of Twitter followers was helpful here, providing a body of relevant digital rhetoric scholars to follow with the podcast’s account) and tweeting about issues relevant to podcasting, digital rhetoric, and the particular focal points of our various episodes—and, of course, links to the episodes themselves. In concert with Facebook and LibSyn profiles, a website, and an iTunes page, this Twitter handle helped the podcast get over 800 downloads during 2012-13, including a one-day high of 81 downloads following the release of our episode about CCCC 2013.