Basic Twitter Tutorial

Posted by Jon Norwood on Jan 17, 2013 in Apps | 2 comments

Twitter isn’t a new idea anymore. It has become an accepted part of most marketing strategies and to not use it at this point is foolish. It’s a way anyone can reach out to large groups of people on demand without having to buy clicks, score rankings in search engines, or make phone calls.In this video were going to cover the basics of Twitter from set up to sending out your first tweets. By the time we’re done you will have a Twitter account, be able to tweet the articles you write, and begin to build followers. So let’s get started on out Twitter tutorial.

Go to twitter.com and click on Sign up for Twitter. Enter your full name, e-mail address, create a password, and choose a username.

When you create a password I would recommend using letters, numbers, and at least one special character. Also do not use a password you have used somewhere else. This is a common mistake that people make and if someone gets your password you don’t want them going to various social media sites and seeing if it works on everything. A password that I would use looks like this:

eclaptON03!

It may look difficult to remember that but it isn’t if you saw Eric Clapton in 2003. This is just an example, choose what you’re comfortable with but if the Create a Password area says the password you have chosen is weak you may want to choose again. Now go ahead and click Create My Account. Once you click Create My Account you will receive a confirmation e-mail at the address you used at sign up. This will send you to your Twitter home page and you should see this. Don’t worry you’ll get followers soon enough. Now go back to the welcome screen we were at after you clicked on create my account.

Welcome to Twitter

Here you see a welcome screen that has a video, an outline of things to come, and the little blue next button. The video is extremely high level but is useful if you have no idea what twitter is about. The video is a minute and a half of why you should use twitter. Go ahead and hit the next button.

Twitter will now ask you to follow five people. Choose any five you like you can always unfollow in the future if you choose to. I will choose Funny or Die, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Tyra Banks of course, and Pres. Obama. Now choose your five and click next.

Now you are asked to select a category and choose five additional accounts to follow. Select the area you write about and choose your five relevant accounts and click next.

You will now be asked to tell five friends about your new Twitter account. You can if you choose obviously but I tend not to do this. Now click next or skip.

Your Biography is Important

Time to fill out your biography. Be sure to submit a picture, as the default egg image doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence in readers. If you are in a hurry you can fill out the bio later but get it done before you start tweeting. Click next.

Ok you are now an official Twit following 10 accounts. Time to tweet!

As you may have guessed you have no followers yet. These will come in time, but you can still reach people without them. We will use hashtags.

According to Twitter the # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. The site also says the following:

Using hashtags to categorize Tweets by keyword:

• People use the hashtag symbol # before a relevant keyword or phrase (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search.
• Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets marked with that keyword.
• Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end.
• Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics.

I’m now going to tweet one of my articles using a hashtag. We can tweet directly from Twitter.com but I prefer to use the buttons set up on my articles. If you want to tweet a page that doesn’t have a tweet button just click on Compose New Tweet then copy and paste the URL into the tweet box.

Click on the Tweet button and the title of the article will appear. I will now place hashtags in front of the keywords I think people will be looking for. This is a no-brainer with all the current CES news and Apple press going around.

I then hit Tweet and my awesome news is available to all my followers as well as interested parties searching keywords.

You are a Twit!

You have just sent your first Tweet and you are ready to learn more. In the next video we will discuss how to find the right hashtags to reach your audience as well as using trends to generate traffic.

Thanks for watching our basic Twitter tutorial and please Like this video on this page as well as YouTube.