How to start on Twitter

One of the items on the list from the April 7, 2009 post was to start on Twitter.  Since you may or may not have already started a blog, this one will be a good one to sign up for anyway.  Twitter has many other uses that just promoting your site(s).  A lot of people use it to connect to other folks that are “tweeting” about the same things. 

Here is how to start on Twitter:

1. Figure out a name you want to use on Twitter.  This will be a public, so you will want to take that into account when you create your name and fill out information.  I am using JohnnyOptimist.  You may note that I did not put a space between the names.  This is because spaces are only allowed as _ and therefore will look a little different. 
2. Go to www.Twitter.com
   1. You can watch the video to learn more, or click the Get Started - Join button
   2. Fill out the information boxes
   3. Once you have done all the steps they ask, you are now on Twitter!
   4. They will give you 20 different “famous” people to start following.  You can choose to not follow them if you like.
      1. Following someone means you will receive their Tweets on your screen.
      2. You can follow and unfollow people at any time.
3. Now what?  You will see a box with a number of 140 in the top right corner.  The top of the box says “What are you doing”.
   1. The number will change as you type.  This is the number of characters you have to type your message in.  This keeps the messages very short.
   2. If you want to paste a website address in, it will use up a lot of the characters, so I usually do it first then type in the rest.
   3. Once you have typed in your message, click Update  – you have now sent out a Tweet
   4. People who are following you receive your Tweets on their screen just like you receive Tweets from people you are following.
   5. If someone looks at your profile, they will be able to see the picture you loaded, the bio and other information you typed in, as well as all of your Tweets.
   6. If you are looking for someone to follow, you can click the Find People link at the top.  Type in JohnnyOptimist and you should find me.  Then click “follow“
4. Keep in mind, that many people will not follow you if you don’t have any Tweets, and many people will not follow you if you have too many Tweets.  For instance, when someone starts following me, I can see that my number of followers has increased.  I click on “followers” and see who started following me.  I then click on their picture to see their profile and see what type of Tweets they send out, how frequently, etc.  If someone doesn’t ever send out Tweets, they better have a huge following for me to follow back.  If someone sends out a Tweet every couple minutes with stuff like “I just wiped milk off my face”, “I just took out the garbage”, etc. then I am not going to follow them because my message board will be filled with stuff I don’t care about.  This is all up to you to decide how you will handle following people and how often you Tweet and what you Tweet about.

This at least got you started.  There are a million places on the internet to learn more about Twitter, these are just the basics and how to start/sign up.  I will go further into following/being followed next week.  There are some tools you will want to download as well to help you with Twitter and keeping up with your followers.

By starting on Twitter now, you can begin to get a feel for the service as well as build up a following that will come in handy later when you are trying to get the word out about your blog.

Any questions about Twitter you would like me to cover?

Ben
Blogmaster General