Basic Tips for Twitter Beginners

Posted : Monday 4th February 2013

1. Choose the shortest Twitter handle you can

Tweets are 140 characters long and your Twitter name is part of those 140 characters.

2. Get an avatar

Add a picture of your own. For personal accounts a face avatar is probably best. Brands usually use their logos.

3. Leave room for retweets

One of the things people want you to do with their tweets is to retweet (RT) them.
** Bonus tip: Use a URL shortener like Tiny URL or Ow.ly to shorten links in tweets.

4. RT (retweet) wisely

Don’t forget that whatever you RT ends up on your Twitter timeline. If you retweet 20 links in the span of 3 minutes your followers will find it difficult to follow.

5. Find followers

Until you have followers and are following enough people, not only is Twitter going to be boring, your comments and links are not getting to a very big audience.You also do not have to follow everyone who follows you.

6. Interact

There are celebrities and famous people who only tweet their links and comments and don’t interact. That might work for them but won’t for most people.

7. Don’t be afraid to interrupt, jump in and give your two cents

On Twitter it is not only NOT rude to jump into a random conversation, it is actually expected. It’s kind of the point of Twitter.

8. Be careful where your @ goes

When you are tweeting someone or replying to a tweet, your tweet will start with the Twitter name (including the @ sign) of the person you are tweeting to.

9. Learn your options

You have quite a few options when you tweet. You can just tweet, which basically means you are posting an update that all your followers can see.

You can tweet to someone specific.

You can tweet to someone specific but put words in front of the person’s Twitter name.

You can tweet multiple people at once by using all their names with a space separating each of them

You can retweet.

You can reply to a tweet.

If more than one person is mentioned in a tweet you can reply to all.

You can block a user who is a spammer or someone you don’t want.

You can block a user and report spam.

10. Be careful of opening links in direct messages

This is probably a no brainer, but there are lots of spammy direct messages. As in email, sometimes direct messages get hacked as well. So unless you know a link is okay, don’t open it in your direct messages.

11. Twitter is addictive

Plain and simple, Twitter is addictive. Now, before you jump in, this is your last chance to run away.