How to Twitter

Recently I joined the millions who Twitter. For me I'm still deciding how to use it and why. Here's some of those answers:

Twitter: a step-by-step guide to getting started

Posted By: Shane Richmond

If the recent buzz around Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, has aroused your curiosity you may be wondering how to get started. Twitter is not a publishing platform, as I said yesterday, so you can’t simply go to the site and read it. Well, you can but that’s not really the point. To get the most out of Twitter you need to build a network and then start using a few tools.

So here’s a step-by-step guide.

Getting started
1. Twitter allows you to send short messages to tell the world what you're doing, thinking, reading or whatever else you feel like saying. If you use Facebook, think of it as being like the status updates. The service allows you to follow people and be followed by people. The people you follow will form your network and their updates will appear on your Twitter homepage. The people who follow you have chosen to have you in their network and see your updates. However, Twitter is asynchronous. You don’t need to follow everyone who follows you. So you may be in my network but I don’t have to be in yours.

2. Go to Twitter and create an account. You can give yourself any username you like but it’s best to choose something that people who know you will recognise: that will make it easier for them to find and follow you.

3. Fill in your biography. Say something about yourself. It helps people to decide whether they should follow you.

4. Post your first tweet. It should go in the box underneath the question “What are you doing?” and it must be 140 characters or fewer. Soon you’ll start building your network and you’ll want to have something on your page when your first visitors arrive. Try to post something that, in conjunction with your biography, will give people a reason to follow you. “Trying to understand Twitter” is fine as a first post but you need to follow it up very quickly with something more individual. Try posting a link to the most interesting article you’ve read recently, for example.

Start building your network
5. Start building your network. Look for friends and colleagues who are already using the site by clicking ‘find people’ at the top of the page. When you find someone who you want to add to your network, click on their name to see their page and then click ‘follow’.

6. Following people is the easiest way to let them know you are there and some of them will soon start following you in return. Your page will display a count of the number of people following you and the numbers you are following. You can stop following people in your network at any time by going to their page, clicking ‘following’ and then clicking ‘remove’.

7. Each time you find someone you want to follow take a look at who they are following. Add anyone who looks interesting and even a few people you aren’t sure about. The more, the merrier. Try to add around 100 people so that you have a busy network. Remember - you can prune your network as you get a feel for who’s who.
Don’t be disheartened if it takes a while for your number of followers to grow.

Talking to people
8. Most of the time you’ll be posting updates on what you’re doing. And if that’s all you do, that’s fine. Don’t feel obliged to keep your followers entertained.

9. Sometimes you’ll want to join a conversation. You can send a public reply to people by putting @ before their username and then typing your message. So putting @shanerichmond would direct your reply to me. The person you are replying to doesn’t need to be someone you are following and doesn’t need to be following you for the @ system to work. On Twitter.com, a reply button will be visible when you hold your cursor over a message. Clicking this will add the @ automatically.
Click Settings on Twitter.com and then Notices to decide how @ replies are displayed within your network. If you choose “all @ replies” you’ll see conversations people in your network are having with others. This is a good way to find new people to follow.
If you want to send a message to someone but don’t want all your followers to see it, you can send a direct message. Put d and then the person’s username to send a private message. Remember to leave a space, like this: d shanerichmond. You can also click Direct Messages on the right-hand side of Twitter.com to get a box specifically for sending direct messages.

10. If one of your followers says something so brilliant that you want to share it with your followers, you can “retweet” it. The etiquette for doing this is to put “retweet”, “retweeting” or just “RT” at the start of your message then add the @ symbol and the person’s username and then their message. For example, type “RT @shanerichmond” to retweet one of my messages. It’s acceptable to edit their message to make it fit the 140 character limit.

11. Their may be lots of people talking about a particular topic but unless they are in your network or send you a reply you won’t even know they’re there. This is where hashtags come in. By adding a # and then a keyword, lots of unconnected people can join a conversation. These tweets are sometimes collated at specific sites but can easily be found using the Twitter search engine. For example, Norwich City supporters often add #NCFC to their tweets, which are then collated by Norwich City writer Rick Waghorn at his site.

12. You can save a message to read later or just for posterity by clicking the star that appears when you hover your cursor over it.

Tools
13. Twitter’s great but Twitter.com isn’t. First of all, you need to visit it or keep it open all the time to follow activity in your network. Secondly, it doesn’t update automatically so you need to keep refreshing to see new messages. A Twitter client is the answer. This is a small program that sits on your desktop and makes it easy to keep track of incoming messages. Many Twitter clients make it easier to reply, retweet and follow different groups of people. I use Twhirl but you could also try Tweetdeck, Twitterific or Twitterfox.

14. If you want to post a link you’ll need a link-shortening site. Some Twitter clients have this tool built in but you can go to a site such as TinyURL, paste in your link and get a shorter URL to help you stay within that 140-character limit.

15. If you like playing with stats, try Tweetstats. It will tell you how often you tweet, when you tweet and what you talk about.

16. There are lots more tools. Mashable has a good selection.

If that sounds like a lot to take in, don’t worry. You’ll quickly get the hang of it and you’ll soon decide whether Twitter’s for you. Enjoy!

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