5 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners
In this post Sanna Lee (@sanna_lee) shares tips for early-stage twitter users.
Anyone who uses Twitter with regularity, and has built a following to engage with others using the popular social media platform can remember their early days on this seemingly confusing labyrinth of profiles, tweets and acronyms. Somehow, these users navigated their way through this initial confusion and learned the ropes to communicating with a whole world of people, 140 characters at a time.
In this post, I offer 5 easy steps to make sense of it all.
1) Set Up Your Profile
The first step is to set up your profile. In Twitter, click ‘Settings’ and begin populating the fields. Focus primarily on your bio: describe yourself and your interests. This will allow other Twitter users with similarities to find you.
Default Twitter Profile Image
Also upload a picture to set yourself apart. The standard egg icon provided by Twitter is boring and forgettable.
If possible, add a link to your business website or blog so viewers can learn more about you. This is also a great way to drive traffic to your site.
2) Follow People with Similar Interests
There are two types of Twitter users: 1) the Casual Tweeter who tweets on a personal level and is tuned into personal interests and 2) the Professional Tweeter who tweets to build their business or career. Perhaps you are a blend of these two (i.e. small business owner). Regardless, it is very important to determine who you’d like to make up your Twitter-verse.
Since you’re new to Twitter, you won’t have many followers, if any. This is a perfect time to ask yourself: Who will make up your follower base over time? Who is your audience? As an example: If you are a quilter, you’d probably like to connect with other sewing-machine aficionados. With this in mind, you’d tweet fabrics, threads, stitching and patterns. As you tweet your interests, find others with similar interests and follow them.
There are several great tools and directories for finding people on Twitter. I like Twellow and JustTweetIt.
3) Be Interactive
Be part of the Twitter platform by conversing and responding with those that you follow. Mention someone by using the ‘@’ symbol and then their Twitter handle. As an example: my Twitter handle, or username is ‘sanna_lee’. You would mention me in a Tweet like this:
“@sanna_lee provides 5 great tips for newbies on twitter”.
Because you’ve used the ‘@’ symbol when you’ve mentioned my username, this will cause your tweet to show up in my ‘mentions’ stream within my Twitter profile. The mentions stream is where you’ll find anyone that has tweeted at you, or responded to your tweet.
Read the tweets of those you follow. If someone asks a direct question, respond (of course, feel free to respond only to tweets that interest you)! Be conversational.
4) Don’t Spam
Nobody likes spam. Do not tweet constantly (every two minutes). Do not send the same tweet repeatedly. Do not send automatic direct messages (DM), or repeated direct messages.
If you want to be unfollowed quickly, then go ahead and spam. Otherwise, be courteous to your followers, and always remember behind those Twitter profiles that follow you are real people, like you, with valuable time. Either be an authentic resource, or be unfollowed.
5) Tweet Regularly
Decide on a Tweet schedule and stick to it. I recommend you tweet daily, but not every few minutes. Find what works for you. Twitter users are often unfollowed because they tweet too much (= spam) or are too inactive.
As you tweet about your interests, people will catch on and you’ll gain followers. This process takes time, and depending on your tweet content and frequency it can take longer for some. Be patient and stick with it. Give credit where credit is due. Don’t tweet content from another profile as your own (easiest thing to do is click “Retweet”). Lack of authenticity will result in the big “Unfollow”.
A few bonus tips:
- Often times, you’ll notice ‘RT’ within a Tweet. This stands for ‘retweeted’ and means exactly that.
- As you gain followers, try using Twitter tools such as TweetDeck or HootSuite to manage replies, mentions, direct messages and interests.
- The hashtag or ‘#’ prefix found in tweets is simply a way to search for tweets that have a common topic. For example, if you search #LOST (or #Lost or #lost, because it’s not case-sensitive), you’ll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won’t get are tweets that say “I lost my purse today” because “lost” isn’t preceded by the hash tag.
- Twitter limits you to 140 characters. When linking URLs, shorten them by using tools such as bit.ly or tinyURL.com
Last, but not least: have fun, and stay positive. Be yourself. Do not only retweet others content, but break out of your shell and share your experiences!
Mention me in a tweet (@sanna_lee) and I’ll promise to respond and follow back! Thanks for reading.
