Twitter: A Quick-Start Guide

I’ve seen a lot of people offering books and guides and instruction manuals on using the social media site Twitter lately – some of them charging money for the information.  I thought I’d give you a simple option – a quick instruction sheet on what you need, how to get started (all my opinions of course) and get you on your way.  There are a lot of applications, advertising schemes, plans and parties involved with Twitter, and you can find out about those easily enough by being involved…so here is a quick guide on how to do just that.  Join the conversation!

BEFORE YOU START:

Give your account some forethought.

My advice is that you use your real name, or if you are joining as a business, your business name.

Have a digital photo of yourself ready – head shots are best – about 300px by 300px is perfect.  Clever can be good, but good, honest smiles work wonders.

If you want a fancy Twitter page background, there are plenty of places on Google where you can either get one for free, or have one designed … if you are a web designer yourself, it’s a simple background image you can apply behind your profile.  You can either have one of these ready when you create your accoung or use one of those provided by Twitter…in my opinion this is less important than the rest of the account setup.  In fact, those who go all out and fill their background with all kinds of billboard-looking ad content from their blogs / websites provide more of a distraction than anything…but of course this is a personal preference, and I digress.

You get 160 characters for a bio.  Use them wisely.  Fill this with key words to help similar people find your account, or to target the type of followers you are after.  While a clever or pithy saying might seem a good idea, it won’t help people search you out.

If you are unable to get all of the information you want into your bio, consider creating a web page that is a more complete bio and link it from your Twitter Profile.  Services like Twitwall are perfect for making this simple.

GETTING STARTED:

Go to Twitter and register your account.

Go to the settings link in the upper right.  Fill in your account information as completely as possible.  If you are feeling secretive, consider that to make good, solid connections with real people you need to be as real as you can be.

You can go to Devices and have notifications from Twitter sent to your mobile phone…I’m certain this would drive me insane, so I don’t have it activated, but I know a lot of people do.

If you go to the Notices tab you can have e-mail sent to you when get new followers, new Direct Messages, get a “nudge” when you have gone 24 hours without updating, and sign up for the Newsletter.  I personally never sign up for newsletters…but again, personal preference.  You also have the option of not being shown @replies to your account.  I recommend leaving this on all @ Replies because if you have a lot of folks following, and one of them takes the time to speak with you personally, just seems polite to NOTICE.  When you have thousands of followers, you might need to rethink this.

Quick definition:  @reply – this is when someone sends a public message to a particular user.  Even if that user does not follow you they will see this as long as they have the notifications set to receive all @ replies.  It’s a good way to meet people.  If you follow someone and they follow you back, you can also send a direct private message by starting your tweet with D user_name (where of course user_name is replaced by their actual username.  This tweet will only go to the person you sent it to, not to everyone.  This is good when two people have extended conversations because it doesn’t clog the main stream for their other followers.

Go to the PICTURE tab and upload the photo of yourself.  I change mine fairly regularly, but a lot of people stay with just one for the purposes of recognition.  Your call.  I have a lot of fun with avatars.

Finally, go to the DESIGN tab.  This is where you either pick one of the background images available from Twitter, or click Change background image and upload one of your own.  This completes your setup, and you are ready to tweet.

BUILDING YOUR NETWORK:

Now you need to find some followers, and some people you are interested in following.  My advice is to try two methods at first, and to add slowly…maybe 20 at a time.  One method is to click the link on your new Twitter home page at the right that says EVERYONE.  This gives you all the tweets from anywhere in a big stream.  Watch this for a while, refresh it, and when you see someone that looks interesting, click on their avatar and check out their profile.  If they seem compatible, follow them.

The other method is to go to Search Twitter – put a word or location in the search box, and see who is talking about it.  When you find like-minded people or people you find interesting, click on them, and follow.

When you are following your first 20 or so people, watch what they tweet.  When you see something you have 140 characters worth of input to add to, type @user_name (where, of course, user_name is replaced by their actual username) and then send them a message.  Interacting is the best way to get others to follow back.  Meanwhile, tweet about what you are thinking and doing so that others looking for people like YOU will find you.

Watch for posts with words preceded by the # – these are “hash tags” – if you use a #hashtag then people searching on Twitter Search can use it to search a particular subject or group out.  If you are using one of the applications listed below, you can click on a word with a hashtag and be taken immediately to Twitter Search to see what’s been written about it.  The one other particularly cool use of the # is at a site called Tweetchat - where you can input your Twitter username and password, and enter a chat room environment.  You choose a word like #writechat and you will see only the posts using that hash tag – which allows you to use Twitter to create a private chat room and remain focused, while still making all of the information shared in that chat available to the overall Twitter stream.  This service can be used to schedule chats on particular subjects and can attract a lot of new followers who share your interests.

You may find Twitter easier to follow if you download and install one of the many applications available.  I personally prefer and use TWEETDECK – another popular product is TWHIRL.

I’m not going to get into the wide variety of applications, toys, bells and whistles available … this is just a get-started primer.  I review some of those and give information on them at TWEEPLEBLOG.COM .  This is just enough to get you going, and to keep you from being confused.  Hopefully it also gets you started using Twitter with a minimum of fuss.

Comments and questions welcomed.

Written by David Wilson - Visit Website
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