Working with social media has become second nature to journalists here at the Hereford Times.

We use several platforms, including Facebook, where we engage with almost 40,000 followers.

But the one we use most is probably Twitter.

It is a networking service on which users post and interact with short messages known as "tweets".

Crucially for us, it has been embraced by most large organisation, including the emergency services, for whom it is a much-used way to pass information to both the public and media like the Hereford Times.

The Hereford Times Twitter account now has 20,000 followers, and continues to grow.

We use it to distribute our content. But more importantly, we also use it to find out about what is going on in the community we serve, and what is of most concern and interest to local people.

We published our very first tweet exactly 10 years ago today (May 11).

Perhaps like most people getting to grips with social media in the early days, we were a little hesitant about using it. Our first tweet was a rather underwhelming "Test tweet"!

I'd like to say we came up with something a little more exciting for our second. But we didn't:

By day two on the platform we thought we'd try a link to one of our stories. This one promoted the line-up for the Hay Festival. Sadly, the link to the story is no longer active.

You might have thought we'd have got the hang of it by now, but no.

Our next tweet went out five days later... and we were still a little uncertain about things. It said only: "test".

But by the next day we clearly felt more in control. A tweet went out linking to a news story about a rescue at Symonds Yat:

From there we were off and running, though we still had lots to learn about this exciting new medium, so different to the print format we had been used to.

Other tweets that month 10 years ago included:

We have now tweeted more than 48,000 times, and add pictures, video, ballots and giffs (animated pictures) to what were in the early days text-only messages.

If you are one of our Twitter followers, we want to thank you for being with us.

We are so grateful for all your retweets, and we love it when you reply to our tweets. We really do listen to your feedback, and try to respond positively.

We also welcome any ideas you might have about how we can use Twitter better.

These are our current Twitter accounts. Please follow us!

Was your first tweet memorable? I'd love to read it. Tag me: @johnwilsonwn