I’ve had several people ask me: “How on earth do I use this Twitter thing?” or the even more popular: “I signed up for Twitter but I don’t get it, it seems dumb.” As someone who enjoys using Twitter, and finds it useful, I’m willing to guide you through the app. But first you have to promise me that you’re going to it a “good try.” Twitter is one of those apps that gets richer the more you use it and understand it. It’s not going to take a lot of time, but you really need to engage with it in order to “get it.”
Create an account
Before you do anything you’ll need to create an account at twitter.com. This involves choosing a username. Here’s my advice: keep it short; I would say 8 characters or less if you can. The reason will become more apparent later, but generally you need to know that people are going to be including your username in their tweets, and they only have 140 characters total to work with.
You will also want to upload a profile picture and write out a short bio for yourself. Again, your experience will probably be a lot “richer” if you write a bio that succinctly interesting things about you: your work, your interests, etc…
Start following a few people
After this you should start “following” a few other Twitter users. If you don’t know anyone, you can start with me: http://twitter.com/mijustin. Generally, you follow people by visiting their profile (ie. http://twitter.com/username) and clicking the “follow” button. Anyone you follow will now appear on your Twitter’s “stream” or “timeline” (the ongoing list of other people’s tweets that you see on your Twitter home page).
When you click “follow” on someone’s profile they’ll be alerted that you’re now following them, and they’ll have a chance to “follow” you back. Anyone following you will now see your updates, anytime you post a new tweet.
Post your first tweet
Here’s one of the funny quirks about Twitter: the interface prompts you with the question: “What are you doing?” but most users don’t answer that question (at least not all the time). Yes, that’s part of it, but you need to understand that Twitter is like a giant conversation. People use it to share interesting links, ask questions, search for topics, broadcast news, and have two way conversations. The point where you’ll really “get” Twitter is when you start doing those things.
Engage in the conversation
Replies: to reply to someone you can type in the “@” symbol and their username (ie. “@mijustin Thanks for that link; I’ll check it out right now“). You can also click the “reply” link on a particular user’s tweet.
Re-tweet: quoting people on Twitter is encouraged. If you want to take someone else’s tweet, and re-broadcast it to your followers, you simply type in “RT” and then “@” and the username (ie. “RT @mijustin These are interesting economic times; AIG lost nearly $400K a minute“)
Direct messages: if you want to send someone who is following you a private message use the letter “D” at the beginning of the tweet, and just type in their username (without the @ symbol): “D mijustin Did you get a haircut today, because you are looking goooood!“
Understand Twitter search
While it’s not listed on the Twitter home page “search.twitter.com” is a really important component to the overall experience. It allows you to search through all the different conversations on Twitter. Let’s say you’re interested in web apps. You could search for “web apps” but you can also search for items that have been “hash tagged,” for example “#webapps”
Using hashtags will also be important to your overall experience. Here are some examples of tweets using hashtags:
- “Back in the 90′s Commander Keen was my #favoldgame” – Your “#favoldgame” tag will now become a hyperlink that will bring you to a search page with all the other posts with the same hashtag.
- “I just got back from the best cafe ever: http://axiscafe.com – #yeg” – When you want to tag your tweet with your location, use the airport code for that location (in this case “#yeg” means Edmonton)
- “I’m starting a new business, and need advice on a #pos system and #financing. I’m also looking for a #rails developer.” – This tweet is meant to bring in responses. People searching for these tags, for example a Rails developer looking for a job, are more likely to find and reply to your tweet.
Use some Twitter apps
Keep using it
Remember instant messaging? At first it seemed like a ridiculous concept: regular people typing out their conversations, using a strange dialect of emoticons and acronyms. There was a bit of learning curve. But after a couple of years, people started using it. A lot. And not just nerds – even normal people started using IM.
It’s the same thing with Twitter. It’s a great tool; but you’ll need to use it regularly to fully understand it.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Mattias // Mar 4, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Nice article– very clear. I haven’t used hashtags much but I’m going to start today!
2 Nathan // Mar 4, 2009 at 9:52 pm
When I read/heard about Twitter it sounded kind of dumb, until I saw that friends of mine were writing funny stuff to each other. I hate missing out on jokes, so I signed up. And I’m a better man because of it.
3 justinjackson » A beginner’s guide to Twitter // Mar 4, 2009 at 11:26 pm
[...] You can read the whole thing by clicking here. [...]
4 Mike Bridge // Mar 5, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Do you have to follow @hashtags in order to get your hashtags to work (http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Hashtags)?
5 Justin // Mar 5, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Mike,
Nope! The silly thing about the regular “twitter.com” site, is that when you’re viewing your stream (the timeline of other people’s tweets), your #hashtag isn’t hyperlinked. Very dumb (however, if you use TweetDeck this is not the case).
Your #hashtag will become hyperlinked in http://search.twitter.com
6 Barbra Sundquist, Bio Writer // Mar 10, 2009 at 12:47 am
You make a good point about writing a good Twitter bio. I think for most people the hardest part of writing a professional bio is choosing what to put in and what to leave out. Because after all, a bio is supposed to be short…especially on Twitter! But most of us have done lots of different things in our work careers. How do you decide what to focus on?
There’s a simple answer: focus on what’s going to be most relevant and impressive to your target reader!
You see, a bio is not a resume. You don’t have to list everything you’ve ever done. Just focus on the parts that are going to “sell” you to your reader.
For example, when I wrote my bio for my site http://www.HowToWriteBio.com, I focused on my technical writing and business coaching background – which is the information that shows that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to writing bios.
Because that’s what potential clients want to know about me in this context. They don’t really care about all the other types of jobs I have held.
A bio is a little advertisement for you. So think about who will be reading your bio and what you want them to know about you. Then advertise your best and most relevant features!
7 Cliché marketing doesn’t work | Norwex Power // Mar 13, 2009 at 6:51 pm
[...] this post isn’t about Twitter per se; if you’d like to learn more go to my “How to do Twitter” [...]
8 sgeve // Apr 9, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Nice article. I’ll make sure to link to it for anyone I know who is starting out using twitter. Dugg it too:)
9 Brandi // Apr 21, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Great article!I will be sending all my new confused Twitter virgins here!
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