Here is my step-by-step tutorial and quick-start checklist to help you be successful on twitter. Whether you are new to twitter, or you’ve been around awhile, these steps are important.
What is twitter? Twitter can be a fun way to keep in touch with your family and friends. Here’s the description from the twitter home page: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” So twitter is like a personal blog, only with shorter and more frequent entries. It’s a microblog; a communication tool you can access on the web. It can also integrate with text messages (SMS) on your mobile phone.
Take two minutes to watch this easy to understand intro to twitter by CommonCraft.com.
I’ve been active on twitter for about a year now. It’s becoming more beneficial to me in several ways, such as connecting with new folks, and promoting my GrandparentsTLC.com site. But it took me few weeks to figure out what the big deal was with twitter. I’ve seen several new tweeple struggle to learn how to successfully build their little community of friends and followers. Many of them go about it in an ineffective way. I recently tweeted about this -
I see folks joining twitter – some of them famous. Someone should write a guide of things to do before promoting yourself on twitter. Dec 6th from twhirl
When I see someone new following me, I want to learn about them. So I check out their twitter profile, read their bio, and click on their website. Sometimes I get a follower that is new to twitter, who has not taken the time to set up their profile information. Some of these people are following lots of other folks, but not too many follow them back.
One problem is twitter’s recommended steps for setting up a new account. It’s missing a very important step: setting up your profile information. This should be done before following anyone, and before your first tweet. Your profile needs to include your photo, bio and your website.
I usually advise people to use their real name and photo. To make your name more readable, capitalize your username, as in ShaynePacker. (If you already have a twitter account, you can fix the capitalization in your account settings. As long as you only change the capitalization and don’t add or delete characters, you won’t hurt anything.) If your twitter ID is your company name or product name, you should capitalize it.
Here are the steps you need to take. Even if you have a twitter account, double check each step to make sure you’ve done it completely, as they are all important.
- Create a twitter account.
- Set up your information for people to see.
- Create your first status update.
- Find your friends and new people to follow.
- Start engaging followers in meaningful conversation.
(Tip: right-click or command-click the links below to open them in a new tab so that you can refer back to this tutorial.)
✔ Step 1. Create an account at twitter.com using these guidelines.
- On the signup page, capitalize your first and last name, as in ShaynePacker.
- Skip the next invitation page, Are your friends on Twitter? You’ll do it later in step 4.
- Skip the next page, the home page. You’ll update your status in step 3.
✔ Step 2. Set up your information for people to see.
- Click on the Settings link at the top of your twitter page.
- Fix the first text field (Name) so it is First name, space, Last name (with capitals).
- Set your time zone, URL, bio, and location. (Make your bio interesting.)
- Click on the Devices tab if you want updates to come to your mobile phone. Enter your phone number. (You can decide this later if you want.)
- Click on the Picture tab, and upload your photo.
- Click on the Design tab, and select a theme you like. (You can change this later.)
✔ Step 3. Create your first status update.
- Click on the Home link at the top of the twitter page. It asks, “What are you doing?” Update your status so your future followers will know you are real. You can type anything; perhaps “Signed up for twitter. Setting up account.” Enter one or more updates.
✔ Step 4. Find your friends and new people to follow.
- Click on the Find People link at the top of the twitter page.
- Then click on each of the tabs to find your friends by their name or email address, your address book, etc.
- Another tool for finding people you know or want to follow is search.twitter.com. Try typing their name or nickname, their website, or some other identifier.
- Now go searching for other interesting people. Read their profiles and check out their website before deciding to follow them. Then click follow, and send them a tweet that lets them know who you are or why you’re following them.
✔ Step 5. Start engaging followers in meaningful conversation.
- Ask them for advice. Ask questions. Ask how their family is doing if you know them.
- Offer tips and advice when you see others asking for it.
- Be open in your conversation. Go with the flow.
- Talk with people, not at them.
So now your twitter profile should be complete and people will be able to get to know your quickly. Enjoy twitter! And don’t forget to follow me on twitter. I’ll follow you back. Please let me know if this tutorial was helpful by commenting below. Be sure to include your @TwitterUserName. You can also tweet about this article to your followers. And bookmark it below. Any of these things will be appreciated. 
There are several good blogs and articles about twitter. Twitip.com by @ProBlogger and friends is one I highly recommend, particularly some of the beginner’s articles.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Nice job
I’ll be adding this to Delicious 
January 15th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Excellent article Shayne. This helped a lot as I try to get back into Twitter after being inactive for a few months. I liked the twitip.com reference and articles there also. Thanks! Jeff
@JeffNordin
January 15th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Great article, Shayne. Thanks for posting – I will be sharing it with new Twitterers. And, like Jeff, I also liked the twittip.com link.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Wow! This would be really useful for twitter first-timers! I also bookmarked it on delicious…and tweeted it!
Yes, it is important to update a few times when you begin using twitter. I wouldn’t follow a guy who has only tweeted a single tweet, would you?
Anyway, thanks for the information!
January 16th, 2009 at 1:55 am
Shayne,
This is excellent! I was going to do a post like this (didn’t have the time) so now that you’ve got this here, I’ll just Tweet the link to the new Tweeple I run across so that they can get off to a great start!
Here’s to your success!
Bradley
@OutsideMyBrain
January 16th, 2009 at 2:01 am
useful stuff man, thanks.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Excellent quick start guide. Next you need to do a guide for those of us who are starting to have too many friends on Twitter and can’t keep up with everyone
Thanks for being such a great Twitter friend!
-Jodi
January 16th, 2009 at 3:28 am
Kaye, Jeff, Cindy, Gloson, Bradley, Jodi – Thanks for all of the great comments so far. I really appreciate them.
Jodi – Glad to see you’ve capitalized your UserName and Real Name. It looks sharp!
January 16th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Great stuff, fantastic twitter guide!
January 16th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Great starter guide. Especially #5. Way too many ppl with 1 update, following 1k tweeple, and 10 followers probably b/c of auto-follow.
Not an effective way to engage in meaningful conversation in my opinion!
@dorondinovitzer
January 16th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Nice article, Shayne. I have not used Twitter yet, but now have a better idea about how to get started. Thanks!
January 16th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
toneendungu became ToneeNdungu, the random thoughts listed in my tweet became conversations..and my 57 pals became..well..ok..stayed 57…but am the optimistic kind
haa haa. Thanks Shayne, tweeter for me is place to learn and share..with 6 people or 60, doesn’t matter. I have a place to hear and be heard. Now I just know how to do it..better! working on the blog..
January 17th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Just “tweeted” this post Shayne. This was definately a blog post worth mentioning to my followers.
January 18th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Great tutorial. Wish I’d had access to it before starting on twitter.
January 19th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
great post, Shayne, should be required reading when people open a twitter account.
@jantallent
January 19th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Good info for those just getting started on Twitter. Very helpful post.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:41 am
Could use a primer/secret decoder ring on how to do what you recommend in step 5. I can’t figure out how people are doing the back/forthing that I see through all that “@so-and-so blah blah blah” conversation. Got anything for me? (she says as she checks to make sure her twitter profile is all set…)
January 27th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Figured it out, if anyone was curious. Hey Twitter folks. Usability point – that light gray arrow that comes and goes and doesn’t look a think like any other reply arrow I’ve ever seen isn’t exactly memorable or learnable as a “reply to tweet” arrow. Can you guys look into that for me? Great, thanks. But seriously, folks, found that there’s a little gray arrow to the right of tweets. Click that and you’ll be in the tweet compose field with the “@so-and-so” bit at the beginning of your tweet. Warning – the @stuff eats characters so you’ll have less space for your tweet. Enjoy!
February 12th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Thanks everybody, for all the great comments so far. I have had lots of twitter folks tell me this is helpful. So I am grateful to be able to help.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
[...] When you set up your account, choose a username (ID) that’s readable, and capitalize each name or word. For example: ShaynePacker, not shaynepacker. GrandmaWebb, not grandmawebb. I usually advise people to use their real name and photo. The same for any social network, such as Facebook and twitter. (See my Twitter quick start checklist.) [...]
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If you want to communicate with me, feel free to send a message to me @ShaynePacker on Twitter.
So comments are closed for this post.