How to Twitter? Here is Twitter.com Newbie’s Guide
Due to few request and poking from my friends present to you the super newbie guide to get you Twittering like a master songbird.
First and for most, go to www.twitter.com and sign up for an account or if you already have an account just sign in at the top right of the site
To sign up, you just need to fill in your full name which will show on your account headers and username.
This is very important for your username will be used to search you, direct message and also will be used ad your account address. But no worries if you got it wrong you can make changes in the settings.
or example my username is josephchew so my account address if you were to find is www.twitter.com/josephchew like above. make sense?
After getting an account.confirm the account and sign in through www.twitter.com
When you get in the first user interface you will arrive at is the Homepage as below.
First off, lets start with the top tool bar which will help you add people and change the settings for the account.
Top User bar
The top user bar consist of:
1) Home – As seen at the above picture it takes you back to your user home page
2) Profile – Takes you to your profile page which is www.twitter.com/<your username>
3) Find People – Explained below
4) Settings – Explained below
5) Help – If you still don’t understand much and have questions you would like to ask you can
try submitting your questions at their help forum
6) Sign Out
Finding People
There are 6 ways to add/follow people to your list:
1) Find on twitter – just type in your friends username, last or first name
2) Find through network – sign in to 3 of the most popular emails and add friends from there.
(Gmail, Yahoo and AOL)
3) If can’t find them just invite your friends to join by email
4) If you don’t have any friends, (ya right!) just pick a few people off their suggested user list.
5) Click one of your friends you follow. go to their profile and click their following list. From there you
can add whoever he is following and most probably most of them are your friends. =)
6) If you really have no one to add. Then just type josephchew in the find people and add me!!!
Muahaha!!!
Settings
Settings is where you can change your username, full name, where in the world are you now (you can put whatever you want like say “Timbaktu” hehe…) and you can at your website or any other address you want.
you also can change how you want twitter to tell you whats happening to your account through notices. by default you’ll receive notices through emails when you get a direct message or new follower.
Here in settings is also where you upload your profile picture. It’s quite important for your friends to recognize you and make your account look real. But please keep the size of the pic below 700kb please!!! i know alot of people like to upload huge sized picture cause it makes them look ‘prettier’. Duh!
On the connection part is where all your feeds you allow to from your twitter account. Like i have friendfeed.com access to my twitter updates and from there my Facebook will be updated through my friendfeed. will you how to do this below.
How To Tweet in Twitter
There’s 3 ways to twit on twitter:
1) Broadcast
First, it’s the broadcast to everyone in your follow list. You just type what you are doing or any thoughts in the ‘what you are doing’ textbox. Yes that’s what it says on the top of the textbox. You are limited to 150 letters so it’s the same as one normal size sms. The difference here is that you can also add links to other sites and interesting news.
2) Mention & Replies
Second way to twit is called mention or @replies. Mentions and @replies are 2 different things.
What is @ replies?
You add a @ in front of the username to send someone a message or to reply to a message that they send to you using the same format. By writing => @+username+message to designate their message as a reply to another person or send a message to a user on twitter.
You can also reply directly from someone’s tweet by clicking the swoosh on updates by other users. By clicking the swoosh twitter will automatically add @username to your next tweet. Now you can send a reply to the author of any tweet just by clicking a button!
notice the arrow like swoosh at the bottom right
What Is Mention?
A mention is like messaging and highlighting the post to the user which you have mentioned at the same time. By doing this you are posting to all your followers and also your post will be include in to the user’s reply tab that have been mentioned. mentions under the replies tab. If you include more than one person in your update and you use the @username format, that person will also see the update in their replies tab too.
Like i post a post with a mention to myself which is updated in my @ reply tab too. Idiotic i know but you get
point. lol.
3) Direct Messages
In addition to public updates and @replies, you can send followers private tweets, called direct messages, too. If someone is following you, you can send a direct message from the web via the "message" link on the profile page.
You can also send direct messages from:
- the reply icon attached to messages in your direct message inbox
- the drop down box on the direct message inbox page (please note: this is a random selection of people who are following you, not the complete list. If a follower’s name is not on this list, use options 1, 2, or 4)
3. The status update box using the direct message command: d + username + message
Tip from twitter help: to reply to a regular Twitter update with a direct message from your home page, click the arrow/swoosh at the end of an update; this sets an @reply in the update box. Remove the ‘@’ sign and replace it with a "d" and a space, and type the message. People who have their direct message text and email notifications set to ON will receive direct messages on their phones and/or via email. Tweets sent using any of the methods described above are not public: only author and recipient can view direct messages.
Additionally there is also the #: Hashtag. Used to designate a topic such as #IndonesiaTsunami so that people can easily search for tweets on a topic. (It is totally unnecessary, though, because a search on a keyword without the # returns the same results).
How To tweet like a master wizard!
Twitter is becoming very popular to internet savvy people especially at the states. It has reach a new viral stage and is really growing at a mind blowing pace. Twitter users rely on others to follow them and unless you have a solid network of followers, you won’t exert much influence, and will end up a tweetless bird or should i say a muted pigeon? keke…
The solution? simple. follow this steps:
- Get a twitter account! and make yourself interesting. Fill out your twitter profile and put up a nice profile picture of yourself
- Get yourself a dedicated twitter software client such as tweetdeck or thwirl. This is to help you handle thousands of tweets easily. Using web interface to handle the volume gets difficult after some time.
- Follow others, reply to their tweets, make contact! and pass on other twitsters wisdom by re-tweeting their post. You’ll only get out what you put in to this network.
- Take time to tweet interesting links, stories and thoughts of your own.More people will follow you is your tweets are interesting and found interesting by your followers and their followers.
TIPS: Balance Quantity with Quality. Just by simply following everyone will not get you anywhere. you’ll only be labeled as a twitter spammer/hogger. And might even get yourself banned. Make sure people that follow you are also of quality to even things.
Other Twitter Application
There are thousands of third-party applications built to enhance the Twitter experience — these are just a few of the popular ones.
- Twitpic : Post a photo on Twitpic, and then share the Twitpic link via Twitter.
- Twhirl : Desktop software to help you manage your Twitter account, find your @replies and shorten URLs so they can be shared on Twitter.
- Tipjoy : A service that lets you send small amounts of cash across Twitter, and then tweet about your donation.
- Twibs : A list of businesses on Twitter with links to their Twitter accounts.
- TweetDeck : Desktop software that lets people split their tweets into columns, such as @replies, direct messages, groups and keyword searches.
- Twitterholic : Ranks Twitter users by number of followers.
- Twitturly : Tracks which URLs are most popular on Twitter, based on how many times they’ve been shared by Twitter users.
- Monitter : An easy way to keep tabs on multiple searches on Twitter at the same time.
I think i repeated tweet to many times to make you confused enough. =) go try it out for yourself. Feel free to drop me a comment if you need more clarification or if you think of any idea to improve this post. Ciaos!
Joseph Chew
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