Twitter

Signing up for a Twitter account.

Before you begin you need to have an email address you can link to the account and have your mobile to hand if you want to be able to Tweet from that.

To set up your twitter account go to the Twitter website and click on the ‘Sign Up’ button. This will then start the process for setting up a Twitter account.

N.B. If you think you’ve gone wrong at any point don’t worry unduly. Most things can be changed in your profile settings including your user name and even your email address if you decide you would prefer to use another one.

Twitter has made the process very straightforward, but I know some people feel a bit nervous so I hope the following instructions help.

Fill in your details. You may need to try several User names to find one that’s available. Try to keep it as short as you can, within reason, as your user name is counted as part of your 140 character limit when you Tweet.

Make a note of your password.

Type your email address carefully! You can change this later if you get it wrong. Just DON’T panic and delete the account.

Once you enter your details and get to this screen you have the option to ‘let others find me by my email address’. That’s really up to you to decide.

You then agree to the terms and whether you want to receive email updates – again it’s optional.

Then click ‘Create my account’

Next, you get some suggestions of who you could subscribe to to receive their Tweets. Perhaps at this stage you could move on without subscribing? You can return later.

There’s a search field to find people you may already know who Tweet. Otherwise, look at the right hand side. To start, you follow 0, but that will hopefully soon change along with the number of people following you!

Now look up to the top right and the drop down menu next to the small green box.

Go to the top right hand side of the page.

Click on the arrow to view the drop down menu and choose ‘settings’.

Settings is where you will begin to customise your account.

This drop down menu is also the the place where you ‘sign out’ of Twitter when you have finished using it.

 

See the yellow bar at the top of your Twitter page? Look in your email account and click the link to confirm. If you’ve entered an incorrect email address at set-up you can change it now, then click ‘Resend notification’.

You can change your user name (if, as before, that name is available).

Choose your time zone and language as a minimum. Click ‘Save’ at the bottom when you’re finished. You can always return later to choose more options.

Now you get the chance to start Tweeting. You have 140 characters to use, or less. Remember that once you have Tweeted you cannot delete the message, so think before you Tweet.

If you misuse the system other users will report you and you will probably find you will have your account terminated.

There’s a link on the right to follow if you want to link your mobile phone to Twitter so you can send and receive Tweets. I cover this on tab 10.

The idea of Twitter is to engage in conversation – using it as you might use the text message facility on your mobile.

You can also add links to blog posts or web pages which you think might be of interest to your followers.

 

 

This is a screenshot of the ‘Profiles’ page where you can then access your details if you want to change anything. It’s a good idea to complete your profile and upload a photo of yourself.

Your profile and your photo is what people will see when they visit your twitter stream of feeds. If you’re just the default oval blob then you may lose followers. We all like to know what people look like.

While you’re on this page, have a look around the options you can access from the top black horizontal bar.

Have a look at the options on the panel on the right hand side too.

Basically, just take a few minutes to familiarise yourself with the functionality options.

 

I’ve come back to this page just to show you again that you can change your user name and email. Just remember to click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom when you have finished.

If you didn’t realise it, you’re now working in, or on the cloud. So, if you’ve heard about cloud computing but didn’t know what it was all about, well, you’re using it with Twitter.

OK, we’ve almost finished the set up now.

Before you start Tweeting there’s just two more things I’d like to draw your attention to.

First, the configuration page for Tweeting from your mobile.

Secondly, the design side of things, customising your page.

 

Before you start tweeting I’m just going to mention something important about this page, the mobile phone configuration page.

When you fill it in leave off the 0, if your mobile number is UK.

Next, click ‘Start’ and you will be taken through a number of steps so that you can send and receive Tweets to your phone. (make sure you have your mobile phone to hand).

IMPORTANT

If you ever decide to close your account make sure you deactivate the mobile phone link first.

This section is also in the ‘Settings’ section and is where you can customize your account page by choosing a background, page colours, text colours etc.

You can upload your own Twitter background. Email me if you don’t know the dimensions you require or you’d like us to get one done for you – we offer this as part of our services.

So, now it’s time to take the plunge and start Tweeting. Return to the ‘Home’ page and even if you haven’t got any followers just try Tweeting. Don’t know who to tweet to?

Well, you can send me a message @SusanCollini and I’ll reply.

You could also have  a look at the  Wings Academy blog.  Follow me  @SusanCollini and you’ll receive links to blog articles as they’re published.