twitter

Twitter is all the rage in social networking right now but if you’re not already in the know it is pretty intimidating.

I created my first account about a year ago and then didn’t make my first tweet until about 6 months later. After making only 11 tweets over the course of another 6 months, I thought better of using my real last name in my Twitter screen name and created a new Twitter account to match my domain name when I bought carrieactually.com.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a service that allows you to post short messages (up to 140 characters). Your followers see your messages when they log into their accounts and you see the messages of the people you are following when you log into your account. Your followers and the people you are following may or may not be the same people.

How do you get started using Twitter?

To get started all you need to do is create an account and post a message.

To make things more interesting, you’ll want to find some people to follow so you can converse with them. When you’re logged in, you can go to “Find People” in the upper right hand corner and then choose “Find on other networks” to see if your email contacts in your Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL account are also on Twitter. You can also browse around your favorite websites and see if the writers of those sites are on Twitter (look around for bird icons).

To reply to a message that someone you are following posts, hover your mouse over their message and then click the arrow that shows up to the right. Reply messages start with @[username] and by default, reply messages are only shown to you, the person you are replying to, and anyone who is following both of you.

You’ll also want to add a picture to make it easier for your followers to identify which messages are from you. Go to “Settings” > “Picture” and then upload an image that represents you. While you’re at it, you can fill in some additional profile information in the “Settings” > “Account” tab; here you can link to your website, add a 160 character biography, and tell people where you’re from.

Twitter Tools

Once you’ve got your Twitter account set up and you’ve started tweeting, you might want to take advantage of the huge variety of additional tools and applications available for Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Tweetdeck I use the Tweetdeck application on my PC at work and my Mac at home to keep up with Twitter without having to constantly press the refresh button in my browser. It also separates out your “mentions” which are any posts of all of Twitter than include your exact username.
• Twitterific [iTunes link] This is my Twitter iPhone application of choice. Let’s me keep tweeting even when I’m away from my computer.
• Mr. Tweet This website gives you recommendations for new people to follow based on who you’re already following.
• Tweetblocker The Twitter world is filled with spammers, you obviously won’t choose to follow them but they will choose to follow you. Tweetblocker is an easy way to filter out the spammers and block them all with the click of a button.

Existing Twitter users, do you have any tips to add? Those of you not yet using Twitter, are you less intimidated now?

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