(image by Yiying Lu)
You’re new to Twitter. Welcome. Your first impression is probably just like mine was when I first joined: “…… now what?”.
The answer: follow this guide.
Step 1: Getting set up
Let’s take care of some plumbing first.
Stop using the web interface (www.twitter.com) right now
Twitter clearly doesn’t want you to use its website, because it is horrible . It is so abysmal that “keeping track of the conversation” is impossible. Stop using the web interface right now.
Instead, use a Twitter client. It will making twittering much easier (you’ll save time) and it will be more enjoyable to keep track of people (you wont need to visit twitter.com every few minutes to see if someone’s trying to communicate with you).
I use TweetDeck on my Mac and PC and strongly suggest you use it as well. I’ve heard many recommending Twhirl as well. There are other clients – many are listed at www.twitter.com/downloads if you’re interested.
Get used to 140 characters.
All talk on twitter is 140 characters or less. Get used to URL shortening services like http://bit.ly and http://is.gd. They take really long URLs and make them really short. You’ll be using these anytime you want to share a URL that you think is worth sharing (happens a lot). Thankfully, TweetDeck integrates these services – so you wont need to leave your client when you want to link to something clever.
Communicating with people: Using the @ sign
When you want to say something to everyone, just say it. Example: “Hi everyone! It’s great to be on Twitter!”
When you want to say something to someone in particular, begin your twit with the @ sign then their username. Example: “@seanpower hi there! Thanks for this guide!”
When you want to say something to someone but want everyone to read it, don’t start your twit with an @ sign. Example: “You should follow @seanpower and co-author @acroll. Their book, Total Web Monitoring is awesome.”
Step 2: Connecting with others
Twitter is about connecting with people. Since you’re starting out, you can check out what people are saying in a stalker-like fashion. You can listen in on conversations without others knowing that you are doing so. Don’t worry. On Twitter, this is not considered creepy.
Don’t add people you don’t know (for now).
It might be very tempting to add as many people as you possibly can as soon as you join Twitter, but don’t just yet. You’re new here, so you’ll probably get snubbed if you do it right away. Instead, during your first couple of days on Twitter, add people that you know relatively well. You can (and should)add more users once you get the hang of using TweetDeck. I find that most people start to “get” Twitter by the time they’ve added 30 people, written 30 tweets and spent about 7 days casually poking around different profiles.
The key to twitter: Using Twitter Search – lots.
Tweetdeck has a magnifying glass icon.
It sets up searchs for specific topics. Since I’m interested in web performance and analytics, I’ve setup a search like this: “analytics OR performance OR logs OR analysis OR optimization OR site down” (without the brackets).
If you’re interested in teaching, try “teachers OR classroom OR teaching OR brats misbehaving”. Hiphop head? Try a search term like “hiphop OR rap OR freestyle battle OR rhymes OR turntablism OR turntablist OR graffiti OR breakdancing”, etc. You’ll probably notice that you get a few false positives (search queries that match, but aren’t about what you’re interested in), so you may need to tweak it a bit. Either way, this search box will showcase a list of people talking of subjects that are of interest to you.
Once you’ve set this up, you can then “inject” yourself into a conversation. For example:
In my “analytics” search stream, I found a person called @webtrafficroi that tweeted the following message:
Since I had a few minutes on my hands, I replied that it was probably larger than that, because he was not taking into account direct traffic from Twitter clients like TweetDeck. I replied to him despite the fact that I did not know him, and had never talked to him before.
We conversed for a while, and the conversation ended up like this:
As a result of his tweet, I gained 7 followers (presumably people reading his profile).
My motivations weren’t about getting new followers. I simply joined in on a conversation that was relevant to my interests. Let me be clear. You don’t have to talk to people if you don’t want to, and they may not follow you as a result of you talking to them, but joining a conversation is a great way to “get started” with Twitter. Even if you’re only interested in finding a few cool people to talk to, using search is the way to unleash Twitter.
Step 3: Make people want to follow you
But if you’ve found someone cool to talk to, you’ll want to increase your chances that they’ll talk to you back. Many times, if you speak to someone (or someone sees you say something mildly interesting), the first thing that they will do is to check out your profile. They will judge you in an instant based on the information found here.
Tweak your profile
If you don’t fill out your profile, I probably won’t talk to you, because you’re probably a spammer. You can demonstrate that you’re not a spammer to me by doing a few things on your settings page – (http://twitter.com/account/settings)
Username: most spammers that come on twitter have numbers in their username (ie – girl74, boy48, randomword62). Try not to use numbers in your username if you can help it.
More Info URL: If you have a blog, profile or website that you’re associated with, tell people. I often go to a person’s website to figure out if I want to listen to them or not.
One Line Bio: Fill in a short description of yourself. Examples you can use: “music addict, architecture student, food lover.”, “mom that’s trying to outgeek her kids”, “marketing director at Acme Inc.”, “author and blogger passionate about marketing and PR”, “drummer for We Are Awesome, producer and remixer”. By writing something about yourself, you tell me that you are a human, and give me an idea of who you are. Don’t write something like “marketing expert”, “PHP guru”, “linux master” – you’ll just come across as being an egotistical jerk (unless that’s what you’re going for!).
Location: Filling out your location isn’t mandatory, but I like to know what city / country a person is in.
Upload a picture. I don’t care what the picture is – just upload something. It doesn’t have to be a picture of you. It can be anything, really, as long as it’s not offensive and annoying or embarrassing to look at. Upload your picture at http://twitter.com/account/picture
Add Alistair and I
Alistair is @acroll and I’m @seanpower :). Click on those two links and hit the “Follow” button.
Follow Influential Twitter Users
They usually have interesting things to say, and will give you stuff to read, content to think about and things to retweet. You can find a list of power twitter users here (caution, many of these people get pretty geeky).
Step 4: Don’t piss people off
You will piss people off on Twitter if you behave in certain ways.
- Don’t Twitflood. Twitterers want to be ambiently aware of you. They don’t want you their face all the time. No more than 2 twits a minute, and no more than a handful of twits an hour at first.
- Don’t automate your Twits. Don’t use tools that automatically tell people stuff unless you really know your audience, and you know that they’re OK with it.
- Don’t use more than 2 or 3 @names in one twit. 140 characters isn’t alot of space. Wasting it by using more than two names probably means you don’t have anything meaningful to say.
- Don’t advertise. You will lose all your followers. People will get angry at you.
- Don’t ego-twit. No one cares that you’re so good at this and that. Talk about things important to others instead.
This is a synthesis of the excellent blog post by Alistair Croll found here. You should read it.
Step 5: If you’re a company, follow back everyone who follows you
If you’re a company, you’re trying to get an audience. Do your audience a favor and show them that you care about them and want to listen to them by following them.
Step 6: Did I mention that you should follow Alistair and I?
Alistair is @acroll and I’m @seanpower ;)
Step 7: Now go have fun!
Hopefully, this will help you overcome any of the bumps and bruises that you may encounter along the way to understanding how to effectively use Twitter. If you have any questions, ask us on Twitter. More importantly, just go have fun! Enjoy!
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