How to use Twitter

If you’ve arrived here, I guess you asked the question “How do you Twitter?” and are probably a little bit confused. I know I was when I first started to use twitter. So, how do you Twitter? Good question. It mostly takes a bit of practice blended with a little bit of trial and error.

Twitter is about Brevity

The beauty of Twitter, it’s a very simple concept, so getting started is easy. Since twitter is about brevity (with so many uses), we will try to make the posts on Tools For Twits (TFT) brief and poignant.

1. Choose a user name – fill in forms
2. Add your website, avatar (photo) and bio to your profile section – important
3. Find users, known as followers
   • A follower is someone that you are “allowed” to send a message to
   • One of the easiest ways to find a follower is to go to Twellow, the largest Twitter Directory and look for a category that suits you
   • You will find a list – click on Follow for the people that interest you.
   • When they have followed you back, you can start talking to them
4. When you have people following you the fun begins – you can start talking
   • You can check who is following you and follow them back – and vice versa.
   • There is also a tab further down in the right menu that shows you a visual of who is following you
5. From the Home Page – type a message under “What are you doing?”
   • Twitter is the same as SMS text messaging from a phone. You are only allowed 140 characters to send a message
   • Learn to be sharp and witty and you will catch people’s attention
   • Hit update and presto, you have done your first twitter, exhilarating, isn’t it…now anyone following you can read the message.
   • This will show up in the time line underneath, where all of your followers messages will appear.
6. What about the @ symbol?
   • The @ symbol allows you to send a message to someone specifically – anyone can view this message
7. What about the DM?
   • Unlike the @ symbol, this is a direct message that only they can read
8. What is the update section?
   • Once you start sending messages the updates keeps a tally
9. What’s the favorites?
   • Just like bookmarks in a browser, you can bookmark your favorite tweet
10. The last section is the search with a list of trends underneath?
11. People use hashtags = # to highlight  a topic (but we will talk about that in a different post) or you can just type in a word
12. Trends give you an idea of what everyone is talking about

There you have it, Twelve Twitter Steps to answer the question how do you twitter effectively.

There is twitter etiquette, rules, limitations and tools that you can slowly learn about but the more you twitter, the more it becomes second nature. A fun tool, social but with much more purpose and capacity than people realize. The Twitter experience is quite a trip,  we hope you enjoy the ride.

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