The Biggest Decision with Twitter

It is time to make a big decision that may change the way you use Twitter. The decision is based on quality versus quantity. Do you want a large list of followers? This is helpful for marketing and list building. Do you want a group of highly focused followers that you communicate with regularly? Either way, you probably want to find some people to follow.

Gaining Followers is not hard. Rushing in a following a mass of people might make you Twitter spammer. The best advice, regardless of quantity or quality is to build your following base slowly. As time goes on, if you are chasing quantity, then you will be able to add more at a time. Start by adding following about 50 members. Generally, when you follow people, they will follow you back. Many people don’t follow back automatically. Some people will look at your Twitter home page to decide if you are worth following or not in their eyes. Others may look at your website to learn more about you. This is why it is important to setup your Twitter account properly.

If you follow about 50 people a day for several weeks you will build a solid twitter account. You can follow many more per day, but I tend to keep it on the safe side. As your account grows you can increase the number of followed members each day. It is also important to keep a balance of people you follow and people that follow you back. As you follow more and near the dreaded 2000 limit, it is important to have nearly as many followers or your account will not allow you to follow any more. That way you won’t get stuck at 2000 and need to unfollow a bunch of user at one time. Stay on top of unfollowing users each day. I generally give people a week to follow back and then I will unfollow those that don’t follow back.

It is important to change your background so it is not the default Twitter page. If you leave it as one of the standard twitter choices you are missing opportunity to set yourself apart from others. Remember that many users still manually look at each person to determine if they will follow back or not. Distinguish yourself from the crowd, attract more followers, and appear professional.

Your background can be packed with a lot of additional information to tell more about you. You can add information that promotes much more than you can add to your bio.

If you are a graphics guru, then you can do your own background. Create a professional background with all of your information and upload it to your profile. If you are graphically challenged or simply want to save time, there are some helpful resources to help you with your twitter background. Simply Google “twitter backgrounds” and you will find quite a few sites offering this service for free. Here are a couple that I have tried with success

• Twitbacs has some great backgrounds and has some of the source files if you want to tweak our background.
• Search Flickr for twitter backgrounds to find some resources. Be sure you check the license before using someone’s work.
• Twitrbackgrounds has many to choose from and can create a custom background for you

There are really only two basic types of Tweets. Replies (also called @mentions) or retweets.

@Mention or Replies

You can reply to someone’s Tweet simply by putting the @symbol in front of their name. For example, “@HolyWebMaker, your blog is awesome!” This makes the tweet appears in their reply page instead of in the general Tweetstream. This is a great way to start conversations with people and establish relationships. Simply comment on one of their tweets or mention something you read on their blog. Many of the Twitter client applications make this simple.

Retweeting

People appreciate retweets and it is a good way to get noticed by others. All you do is put RT in front of the @username. Separate their tweet from your comment if you have one. A common practice is to put two pipes “||” in between their comment and yours (if you can make it fit)

If other people retweet your tweets, make it a habit to thank them. It’s common courtesy. Simply tweet @username Thanks for RT :-) and send.

Start publishing some tweets. Twitter asks What’s Happening – simply answer the question on a regular basis. Many people don’t care about what you are doing until you have established a relationship with them.

Here are some good ways to get started:

• Follow some blogs that you are interested and post links to the interesting posts. You can follow blogs using an RSS feed with a feed reader such as Google Reader. You can actually connect your Google reader to your Twitter account to make this easier. We will cover this later. For now, just tweet something like: “Interesting post on ______. Have you read it? http://example.com/some-great-story”. Make sure you include http:// in the link and not just www so the link is click-able in the Tweetstream. If it’s a long link, there are tools to make the links shorter. We will cover this in future articles too.
• Tweeting quotes is good too. Do a search for some quotes of interest and tweet them. Personal development quotes and quotes by famous people are always popular. I personally like to quote the bible, but that can irritate some people.

Here are some bad ways to get started:

• Start posting sales tweet after sales tweet. You can add some sales in later, but this is not the way to start.
• Politics and Religion are HOT topics. If you can engage like a grown up and shake off a few bad tweeters avoid this area. I personally enjoy it as it sparks great conversation. Just be nice and remember that there is usually a person on the other end that you are communicating with.
• Direct message everyone that follows you. I personally don’t even look at my direct messages on a regular basis. Too many spam messages there. If you can’t say it publicly, then why say it.

Have fun and get a few good tweets under your belt. Do this daily for just a minute or two each day. You’ll start to attract others with consistent tweets.

Setting up Twitter your own account is easy. Here are a few things that you should consider when organizing your account. This is important if you already have an existing account too. Consider these tips and it can improve your entire Twitter experience.

Create an Account:

Go to Twitter and Sign Up. The process is very simple and I won’t bore you with details. Take some time to think of a good username and experiment. As you enter usernames it will immediately let you know if it is available or not. Once you find the perfect name that is available move on with the registration. Generally, the first account you register should be your name if you can get it. Even if you don’t plan to use your name, get it if it is available. You may change your mind later. If you are registering a business name you should get a second account for the business. Some of the following registration screens will ask you to add friends from your contact list or to follow some popular accounts. I generally skip those screens since you can return to them later. I prefer to find my own friends on Twitter.

When you click Finish, you will then be taken to your very own Twitter account. You are logged in and ready to go!

Update Your Settings:

The settings are very important on Twitter. If your account is not completely filled out, many people will not follow you back. Take a few minutes to fill out all of the information on the Account page. Be sure to fill in your More Info URL and the One Line BIO.  People will use the information you enter here to determine if you are worth following. It also helps locate you in searches on Twitter and through various third party applications. Don’t simply enter a bunch of keywords as they appear totally uninteresting to people, although they may get you found. Simply describe yourself in 160 characters. Look around at other members for examples. I never protect updates. I figure, I am on Twitter to be found and meet people. Many people won’t bother following you if you protect updates.

Save your settings and explore some of the other account settings pages.

Look at Devices and enter your mobile phone number here if you want Twitter updates to your phone. I generally do not do this as you will get overwhelmed as the number of friends increase.

Scan the Notices to determine how notification emails are sent. I usually opt out of all the emails because I use other tools to monitor my twitter activity. We will talk about the many tools later.

The Picture page is really important. When you open this page you will see the small avatar on the screen which is the default for Twitter. If you want new followers, putting a photo of yourself here is important. If you are running the Twitter account for your company or business, then your logo is a great choice. The key here is to change the defaults. Put something so you can be identified in the Tweetstream by your followers. The graphic may be more important than your name when people are scanning Tweets. A good image will make you stand out.

The Design page is almost as important as the Picture page.  Here you can change the background of your Twitter page from the default. Twitter provides a number of alternatives that you can select or you can upload your own background. You can also change all the colors if you wish. Again, whatever you do, just change it so you are not running the default. It shows you have taken some time setting up your account. With all the great Twitter applications, many people don’t even look at your web page anymore. However, it is part of your presence on Twitter and is worth taking the little effort necessary to change it. Later on I will show you where you can get or create a professional background that will set you apart.

That is it for the simple setup. Now, send your first tweet. Tweet something like, “I just joined Twitter and I am looking forward to meeting people interested in _______”. Fill in the blank with one or two of your favorite things (it will get you on the radar of like-minded users.  Just type it in and click the Update button.

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, “What’s Happening?” by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called “tweets”, to your friends, or “followers.” Twitter is one of the fastest growing sites on the web today. It is taking the internet by storm and there are thousands of new users joining each day.

Twitter is best described as a micro blogging platform. You are limited to 140 characters each time you make an update, which initially, may seem a small amount. However, as you become more experienced, you will be amazed at what you can fit into 140 characters.

That said, Twitter is much, much more than that. It is like one huge global chat room, but then again, it doesn’t have to be. It all depends on how many people you follow on Twitter. If it’s in the thousands, then your “Tweetstream” will be running fast and furious with everything that’s coming in. If you are only following a few hundred, or even less, then things are much easier to keep up with.

Twitter is also a great way to meet new people online, particularly those with similar interests to you. I will show you how to do this more as we progress through this twitter introduction.