How to Use Twitter for Beginners

Twitter is a social networking site used for almost any purpose. Business, personal and just sharing information are the main things people tweet about.

Get to know your Twitter home page first. There is a menu at the bottom of the page that you need to scroll down to see. Pay attention to the column on the right side of the page, this is where your main information is located. There are several items you should learn first:

What are you doing?
Following/followers
@username
Direct Messages
Search feature
Trending Topics
Message section
Menu at the bottom of the page

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Internet
• Time to read
• Willingness to learn

Instructions

1. What are you doing?
   This is where you type a short message, only 140 characters. This will help you with your writing because you are forced to be direct. The message can be anything you want to say, be sure to always say something nice if you are also using Twitter for business.

2. Following/followers
   Your following/followers should be close in number. If the numbers are very different, you could be seen as spamming or that you are not worth following. You can gradually increase your followers by searching for others who have the same interest as you do. When you find someone you want to follow, click on the follow button. Many times that person will follow you in return. You do not have to know them personally.

3. @your username
   Click on the @your username to see a list of tweets that have your username in them.

4. Direct Messages
   These are like email messages. These are messages that another Twitter user has sent to you directly.

5. Search feature
   Enter a keyword to search for.

6. Trending Topics
   These are hot topics currently being currently discussed. This is a good way to get your name out there by adding to these discussions.

7. Message section
   Here is where the discussions take place. You can read all the public messages that anyone is tweeting about. There are hundreds every few minutes. If you read something interesting, click on the person's avatar, you can follow them from there. Hopefully they will follow you back.

8. Menu at the bottom of the page
   Spend time getting to know the tabs on this menu. The Apps and Help menus have an enormous amount of information for the new Twitter user.

Tips & Warnings

• Take time to read other peoples tweets.

• Learn the jargon.

• Learn how to respond to direct messages before you start tweeting.

• Once you get started tweeting, plan to do at least 10 tweets per day.

• Never tweet anything you don't want repeated, once your message is out there, it is there forever.