People are always asking me for recommendations on who or what to follow on Twitter. I like to steer people to accounts that provide useful information to public like breaking news or an account that interacts with their followers.
I don’t follow people that post mundane items about their lives, grandstand about how important they are or implore more people to follow them so they can stroke their ego and boost about how followers they have.
So if you’re new to Twitter or you’ve been on Twitter since the early fail-whale days of 2006 and are looking for interesting accounts to follow, I present my top 5 Twitter accounts.
5. The New Orleans Times-Picayune (@nolanews)
Occasionally, the Times-Picayune does interact with their followers and they do post breaking news items on their account. Besides that it’s just an automatic notification (using twitterfeed) when a new item is posted on their site. I would ignore the inactive involvement if they added Chris’s Rose column to the feed.
4. Margaret Orr, WDSU-DT meteorologist (@MargaretOrr)
It’s nice to know that there’s a local meteorologist to follow when a hurricane is threatening New Orleans. And when the tropics are quiet, she uses Twitter to announce weather bulletins that include where the storm is heading and what to expect. Sometimes she has to do double posts because of the 140 character limit. She’s also the only meteorologist in New Orleans that’s on Twitter.
3. Dave Nussbaum, WBRZ-DT meteorologist (@Dave_Nussbaum)
Baton Rouge does have competition for meteorologist that use Twitter but Dave Nussbaum stands above them all. What he posts: (sometimes) a daily forecast, tropical updates and severe weather bulletins (including the standard plug for followers to tune in cable channel 18 and digital channel 2-2). I will knock some points off his accounts for the mundane posts about grilling in beautiful weather or cheering for the Pittsburgh Steelers. However, I’ll cut him slack since he posts items when he’s not on the air. And he interacts with followers.
2. WAFB-DT (@WAFB)
If you want Baton Rouge traffic updates, weather forecasts, breaking national and local news, LSU score updates and hate WAFB’s website, then this is the only account to follow on Twitter. You can get more information through their Twitter account than visiting the awfully-design wafb.com website.
1. Louisiana Department of Transportation – Baton Rouge traffic (@BR_Traffic)
Those that live in Baton Rouge do not need to be told how bad the traffic is. And traffic reports are very scarce, especially during rush hour traffic as many radio stations do not air traffic reports. They mostly report accidents on I-10/12/110 in East Baton Rouge parish and sometimes will report how bad the congestion is. I have seen occasionally surface streets (non-interstate related accidents) reported but the core focus is the interstate system. This is the only account that is authorized to send notifications to my phone via text message.