A Gentle Introduction to Twitter or Twitter 101 for Non-Majors

Assuming you haven’t been hanging out under a rock off the grid, you’ve likely heard about Twitter, we’ve even written about it here a couple of dozen times. It’s the micro-blogging social network site where you can post-140 character “Tweets” to share what you’re doing, thinking, reading or just about anything else with your “followers“. The Oprah recently turned up the steam on Twitter by starting to Tweet herself on her afternoon talk show.

See Oprah Tweet.

If you’ve thought about giving Twitter a try and joining the global conversation, but just haven’t got around to it — here’s a gentle introduction to the world of Twitter and micro-blogging. The first part of the introduction will get you signed up for Twitter and your account personalized so that it best reflects who you are.

Getting Started

This is the easy part. Go to twitter.com and push the big green button and you’re on your way.

First you’ll have tell Twitter a little about yourself and what you want to be known as on Twitter.

Nothing very surprising here. First, your full name, your Twitter Username and a password. Good advice would be to actually show your full name and if you have a special nickname that you like to use, use that as your username — if you don’t have a nickname, try variations on your real name. You’ll find that many popular usernames are already taken.

Give them an email address. By default you are sent notifications of Direct Messages (DMs) and when someone Follows you, but these can be turned off. Enter those annoying verification codes and push the button.

Next you have a good chance to find out which of your friends are already on Twitter.

If you use Gmail, Yahoo Mail or AOL Twitter will compare the email addresses in your address book to email addresses on Twitter and give you the opportunity to follow any of your friends that match up.

After you’ve added your friends, you’ll now get a chance to follow a few Twitter celebrities. You can either pick them all, a few or none. Showing my age when I looked over this list, very few were familiar to me.

Congratulations! You now have a Twitter account.

Personalizing Your Account

Next, let’s make the account really yours.

Choose settings from the menu in the upper right corner and then account from the sub-menu.

Since Twitter is really about having a conversation you’ll want to give Twitter people (tweeps) who look at your profile some information to allow them to know a little about you.

Use the more info url box to type a link to somewhere else on the web that they can see more of you. Popular links would be your blog, your work website, your Facebook page, your pictures on Flickr — you choose, but give them something to look at.
The one line bio is your chance to be creative and show people a bit about yourself — use it. You’ve got 160 characters to make your case as to why people should follow you.
Location is where you live. Use that one too, people like to be able to place you and, of course, you’re proud of your hometown. I live in Mountain View, CA — it’s a nice place to live.

If you were to want to have a private conversation with only a few intimate friends, you can protect your Tweets so that you’ll have to approve who sees them. Don’t do this at this point in your Twitter experience, look around for awhile and enjoy the sheer mass of humanity on Twitter. If in the future, you really want to protect your Tweets, go back and do it then.

Next, let’s add your picture. Those of us already on Twitter reading your Tweets will want to see what you look like. Best suggestion is to use a real photo, not a cartoon or a picture of your cat (unless it’s your cat that’s Tweeting). Your picture will be included with your every Tweet in your follower’s timelines. A good head shot works best. Choose your picture from your computer and upload it here.

And there we go, you now have a Twitter account and a personalized profile. Now we’re ready for our first Tweet.

First Tweet

Choose Home on the menu and you’ll find the Twitter input screen.

Go ahead and write something short and interesting that you want to share. You have 140 characters and then press update.

Don’t feel like you have to take the question “What are you doing?” too literally. Folks who over think that prompt have a tendency to just be boring. ”Making toast” or “Having Breakfast” may be of vague interest to other members of your Weight Watchers group but probably not to the Twittersphere,