Top Tips for New Twitter Users

Twitter is expanding rapidly and if you aren’t already tweeting, then I suggest you do and we have put together a list of tips to help you get a good start on twitter.

Setting up your profile.
There is more to setting up than just signing up. What you should do is upload an avatar which will represent you, upload a avatar, add your location, add a link to your website (if you have one) and add a 140 character bio. Doing these simple tasks will make your profile a look a lot better than someone who has just signed up and hasn’t bothered adding their details. Look at the images below and you will see that adding your info makes you look a lot more respectable.

Good Profile
good-profile
Bad Profile
bad-profile

Finding Followers
The best way to find friends on twitter is if your friends already have twitter if they do you already have a head start, but here is a few tips into finding followers:

Interact with people
Now that your following people, you should interact with them here are a few tips:

  • You can use the @ to reply to people example. “@thomasjhardy I agree Internet Explorer is rubbish!”.
  • Retweet people’s links, “RT @thomasjhardy Google a great search engine http://www.google.com”. Make sure to check the site first don’t just RT everything you then run the risk of Retweeting spam.

Managing your twitter account
Managing your account wont be an issue when you first start but once you starting following over 100 people it will become harder to keep up with all the tweets just using the twitter site. This is where twitter apps come in, there are plenty around such as; Twhirl, Twidget and Mad Twitter, but the one I recommend is Tweetdeck.

Hashtags
When I first started at twitter I had no idea why everyone was using hashtags, so I thought I best add it in after Eris commented about it.

An example of a hashtag in use “I think google should buy twitter, no more fail whale! #failwhale #twitter #google #buy”. Now because of the hashtags this tweet would show up in twitter searches under the keywords which have been hashtagged.

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13 Comments to “Top Tips for New Twitter Users”

#1 Posted by notbanksy (08.04.09 at 16:26 )

Nice article Thomas, but one thing, as a new user on twitter: what is the past tense of tweet? Cos I think it might be twat!

Examle:
Q. What are you doing?
A. Nothing much; I’ve just twat.

Thoughts?

#2 Posted by Thomas Hardy (08.04.09 at 16:36 )

@NotBanksy, I think it could be Tweeted or atleast I hope it is!

#3 Posted by Wizely (08.04.09 at 19:13 )

Thanks for this Thomas – absolutely brilliant! Sometimes folks forget that some of us don’t automatically know every latest cool web craze!
And bloody hilarious notbanksy! I think your past tense of tweet is spot-on… there must be millions of mindless twats clogging-up the system!

#4 Posted by Helen (08.04.09 at 20:07 )

Thanks for this :) There were some aspects I just didn’t “get”

@NotBanksy – Don’t worry, we can be two twitter twats together!

#5 Posted by Borellus (08.04.09 at 20:24 )

Great article, thank you for the tips.

I didn’t understand what the RT business was until now.

#6 Posted by erisds (08.04.09 at 23:11 )

Twat it is :) Makes for fun in the office!

One other thing that is worth explaining is hashtags – words you see preceded by a # symbol i.e. #ihatedolly

It allows twitter search and other applications to pick up on certain phrases – search for #ihatedolly and you’ll find a lot of ranting about the dolly plugin for Wordpress. I use tweetdeck and have quite a lot of column views, one of which shows all the tweets tagged #symfony so I can see what’s going on.

This is a great post though! Well done.

And to all the twitter newbies (Twits? :P ) remember – the aim of the game is to follow people and hopefully build a network of people who follow you back. If you don’t have any followers… nothing will happen!

#7 Posted by Thomas Hardy (08.04.09 at 23:53 )

@ErisDs, thanks for pointing out hashtags have added a new bit to tutorial just for you!

#8 Posted by MarieOSO (09.04.09 at 06:44 )

Thanks for explaining the hashtags. I kind of understood what it was, but not how to use it, so this has been great. I also found Tweetlater which helps send an autoresponse to new followers (I know – not everyone likes them, but I was trying to be polite to people I don’t know!). Since using that I seem to be collecting more followers – is there something in that or am I imagining it? Oh well – at least I have more than my original 10 followers, so don’t feel so left out.

I like using Tweetdeck too and would be lost if I never found it, although am thinking of Twhirl now as you can access more than one account, so if I offer social media services to clients, I can do it all on the one app. Twellow is a great directory too and very helpful for finding people to follow.

I find that most people I follow will automatically follow back, so it builds up a good network. Keep up the good work!

#9 Posted by erisds (09.04.09 at 08:35 )

Why thank you! :)

#10 Posted by kychyck (10.04.09 at 01:27 )

This is a great article.Thanks for helping us newbies.

#11 Posted by Guezala (12.04.09 at 20:32 )

Ha nice work oh ye WDF’ers and twitty twatty tweeters? !

Or something. I think I have suddenly got “it” and am gonna have a peek at Tweetlater now as I recon the autoresponding is a nice touch as long as it’s spelt right ;)

Didn’t know about # or RT so thanks for that too :)

#12 Posted by Computer Howto (18.04.09 at 13:53 )

Thanks you very helpful post!

#13 Posted by imz (08.05.09 at 18:48 )

A very useful post, thanks for that :)