One of the benefits of working in public semi-regularly, and being open about the fact that I enjoy learning as much as I enjoy teaching, is that I tend to receive feedback in a fairly regular drip. (Not a lot, but steady.)

An example… I recently tweeted about a program I’m running at school. I tweeted 8 times in a row with a similar sentence stem, hoping to share some information with my followers. A former student — who works in marketing and has a native understanding of social media — direct messaged me almost immediately. For similar missives in the future, he encouraged me, “use a threaded tweet approach.” As he said, “8 similar tweets scan as 8 of the same tweets; people think it’s a mistake, move on, and entirely miss the point of the communication. There’s a better way.”

Feedback is gift that is often withheld. (To test that theory, think about all that you know about the people with whom you work and all that you’ve actually shared with the people with whom you work.)

I’m lucky to have a small audience — built by working in public and making my values known — that takes the time to tell me when and how I can do better.