Set Up A Twitter Account
The first step in getting started with Twitter is setting up a user account. Twitter, the 140 character short message method of communication, gives you the ability to network with and talks to hundreds of thousands of other people online. Twitter started out slowly but in recent months has grown madly.
Now, it is one of the most used social marketing tools online, not to mention social media device. If you do not have a Twitter account, there has never been a better time to sign up for one. There are some things you need to know to sign up.
Step By Step Set Up
The first thing you need to do to set up a Twitter account is to visit Twitter.com. The website is often business, and can be bogged down. If you find an error page, simply refreshed the browser.
Twitter's "fail whale" picture often pops up when the site is being overloaded with visitors. Once at the website, here is what you need to do to set up your account.
• Click on the link that says, "Join for free" which is located right at the homepage.
• Choose your screen name. There are many conventions on what type of name you should select. If you do not mind people online knowing who you really are, use your real name here.
You may want to use the name you are known by online. This does not have to be a difficult or over thought process.
• Upload a picture. Twitter does not require you to have a photo uploaded to use it, but you will find people more willing to talk with you if you do have a photo. The reason for this is simple. Those with a photo are real people for sure.
• If you are unsure if you want to have a lot of people following you, which means they will be able to read your messages, you can protect your messages by clicking on the box that says, "protect my messages."
• You may be asked to provide an email address, just for the sake of identification. It is not shared.
Once you have taken these steps, your Twitter account is set up. With this done, you can start to explore the website and get to know those who are online.
You will be impressed with just how easy it is to start enjoying all that Twitter has to offer.
Twitter Apps: Yes Or No?
When you first begin to use Twitter, you will be able to log into the website, sign up for the account and start posting your brief updates right from the site.
What you may not realize is that you can keep doing this in the same way, or use one of the many applications, more commonly known as apps, instead.
Twitter offers a variety of products to enable you to Tweet anywhere.
There are also many third party products out there, most of which are also free services to use. Apps can make Twitter more accessible, more enjoyable or even easier to use.
One of the options you have is to add a Twitter widget to your blog or to your website. This is a fairly simple tool to use and it can be used at MySpace.com, Blogger, Facebook, TypePad and others.
It allows you to link your blog to your Twitter account. Anytime that you place an updated message on Twitter, it is displayed at your blog or website, too. This is a great way to keep everyone involved.
Another option you have is called Twhirl. It works on Widows and Mac OSX software. It allows you to connect to multiple accounts from Twitter, Iaconi.ca, Friend feed and Seesmic at the same time.
It will send you a notification for any new messages and it helps you by shortening URLS as you need to.
When you sign up for this service, you can also post images to TwitPic, which is one of the most commonly used ways to send pictures back and forth using your Twitter account.
This desktop client is very user friendly and often is highly recommended by its users.
Are you considering using a few Twitter apps? If you are not sure if you should use them, consider the following:
• Check out the company that is producing them. You will want to ensure that they are reputable, especially in instances of third party applications.
• Find out what is downloaded to your computer. You do not want adware or spyware to be downloaded at the same time.
• Be cautious about costs. Many programs give you the flexibility you want without costing you anything at all. Twitter apps make it a lot more enjoyable to use.
You may want to consider a few of these if you are someone who wants to be even more connected than you already are!
