Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm Sharon Vaknin for sina com with your guide to getting started on twitter now this is twitter 101 so we'll go over the basics like setting up your account Twitter lingo like RT and pound signs and finally I'll give you a basic strategy for tweeting on Facebook and Twitter asked you guys to give me your best tips so i'll include those two and i should also mention that there are a ton of twitter apps for your desktop or your mobile devices but i'm just going to focus on what twitter does and you can decide which app to use after we cover the basics ok so let's get started at twitter com first pick a username which should be short and sweet refrain from picking weird handles like dog lover XO we just don't do that on twitter now edit your profile there are only a few things to do here so it's important to get it right upload a profile picture and add a bio as ashley laurel explains your bio should include who you are where you're from and what you're interested in it'll help people decide if they should follow you or not good now that you've got your profile setup let's talk about tweeting this is where you tweet and below this is your timeline where you see updates from people you follow for tweets you're limited to 140 characters or less which you probably know but there is some Twitter lingo you need to learn if you want to talk someone in a tweet use the @ symbol followed by their username your tweet will show up in their mentions tab and anytime someone tags you you'll see it in your mentions tab so if I want to say something to eric franklin or neat opal on twitter ID right at need opal than the message this suite will only show up in eric's mentions and the timeline of anyone who follows Eric and I but if I tweet something and include at need opal somewhere in the middle it'll show up in a timeline of everyone who follows me at replies or mentions are public so if you want something a little more private send a direct message you can send a message to anyone who follows you just go to the messages tab and send one here now let's talk about retweets if you see something interesting from someone on your timeline you might want to repost it to your followers just click retweet under the tweet you want to repo and it'll show up in the timeline or you can copy the tweet and preface it with rt than the person's Twitter handle and that way it'll show up in that person's mentions tab but now that you know how to communicate on Twitter you might be wondering what the heck you should tweet about unless your Kim Kardashian or Charlie Sheen you're not going to get a million followers instantly be patient and use my tips to build your following assignment Everard points out please please please don't talk about what you had for breakfast instead find a niche and tweet about things that you're interested in or good at like if you decided that your niche is gaming post links to articles you found new games you're playing and retweet other people in your gaming community when you retweet your building relationships and getting the attention of other people like you which is important for building a following talk to people or you'll get really lonely send them at replies and ask questions comment on their tweets and make conversation if you're looking for people to follow twitter will give you suggestions over here on the front page like this person said be active in other people's conversations and don't be discouraged if others are not active in yours another key Twitter trick is to use hashtags which are like keywords for tweets just put the pound sign before any word for example I can tweet I found this awesome recipe on chow com I can't wait to try it then you click that hashtag and see who else is talking about recipes sometimes hashtags become so popular that they end up in the trend section in the sidebar it's a quick way to see what people are talking about so those are the basics of using Twitter but before I go here's some advice from Joe sigler when starting new try not to follow too many people too quickly you can get overwhelmed I've seen a few friends quit Twitter because of too much information thanks Joe now if you do get overwhelmed or just have any questions feel free to ask me on Twitter or Facebook fits more than 140 characters and if you want to see more how to videos visit how to cnet com pristine it I'm Sharon Vaknin and i'll see you on the interwebs