“I believe that effective communication is what personal development is all about!”
Twitter is really, really popular right now! It has become the new cultural craze! Everyone from celebrities to their grandma is twittering! You need to embrace it and accept it because twitter not going anywhere. I believe that effective communication is what personal development is all about! A lot of people have asked me what twitter is, so I was thinking of how great it would be to write a beginners guide about twitter for people that might not fully understand what it is and how to use it to its full potential.
What is twitter?
Twitter is a highly effective communication tool that allows you to exchange information very quickly to a global audience. Twitter is much like instant messaging except with a slight twist. The catch is that you can only type messages up to 140 characters so you will have to get creative and straight to the point. The messages you send are called “tweets” and Instead of sending direct messages to just one person at a time twitter sends whatever you tweet to all of your followers at once. You can be a follower or be followed. A Follower is defined as anyone that enjoys what you write about and wants constant updates from you. Followers can be your friends, family or even Sam that lives in Fiji virtually anyone that wants to be a follower can be! Now if you’re not into everyone seeing your business there are also various ways you can customize your twitter account to where you can control who can view your tweets. With that said when you send a tweet everyone that follows will get your updates. So for example if you write “at the mall with family” that tweet will be sent to everyone. If a follower enjoyed or got use out of what you tweeted they have the ability to give you a direct message back to you telling you what they think or even just saying hi. It’s that simple!
Twitter is portable
Twitter allows you to get updates from literally wherever you are via your computer using the main website, email or even straight to your cell phone. I get live updates on my blackberry through a third-party program which i absolutely love called twitterberry. If you have a blackberry i highly recommend you downloading twitterberry its even free!
Who can use twitter?
Anyone can start a twitter account if they want to. It’s completely free and it’s a really easy thing to do. To begin using twitter you will need to go to www.twitter.com and create an account. Follow the step by step instructions and before long you will have your own personal page all set up! Start telling family and friends about your twitter so they can start following you!
Advantages for the average user
An average user can benefit from twitter by using it to keep up with what your friends and family are doing. Its quite fun to see the random things people are doing throughout the day. Another cool thing you can do is share important links with your followers. Now if the link is so long that its hogging up all your character space well than you can use a very popular website called “tinyurl.com”. This website is for the soul purpose of shrinking a url to a simpler less character driven form. The way it works is it you type in the dictionary long url into tinyurl and tinyurl will convert it smaller. So instead of www.abcdefg.com/hijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/12345678910/10987654321 you will see tinyurl.com(some random set of about 6 or 7 letters or numbers). Once it generates a link copy and paste the one it generates instead. When someone clicks on it it will hit up the tinyurl server and redirect you to the real url! Sharing is really beneficial because by sharing what you love is like sending people a great gift.
Advantages for webmasters
Twitter is a great way for webmasters to let their followers know things. I personally use twitter daily! One of the things I use twitter for is to inform my followers about new articles on my blog. For example I will send a tweet after I write a new article including a direct link to it so they can check it out! I also include a a widget on my blog which allows everyone to see my tweets in real-time. I am completely hooked on it! Another highly effective and free way to use twitter is for strict traffic building and advertising. For example If you have 100 followers it is highly likely that you will gain some traffic from people clicking on links you send them. It may not be a considerable amount but any traffic is good traffic. If you own your own business an effective thing you can do with twitter is too inform your followers about new products or links to product reviews! This can only improve your following! With that said if a follower likes one of your articles they can even tweet about it giving you even more traffic!
Additional tips for tweeters
1. Keep informative tweets straight to the point. There is no need to confuse followers by typing alot of complicated mumbo jumbo. Keep it simple stupid.
2. While sending links make sure that the content is valuable. Nothing is more annoying than hyping your tweet link and then there being absolute worthlessness at the other end.
3. Don’t send a tweet every two seconds. This is a quick way too loose follower. Have 5 meaningful posts rather than 50 annoyances.
4. Keep it fun. Keep twitter fun and use it for positive things only.
5. Use it to your advantage by following people you enjoy! I have multiple people I follow that are into personal development, so they will send me inspirational quotes and cool articles daily.
6. Use it to help people. If you just solved the meaning of life you better tweet it! Im sure there is someone that will find your tweets helpful so go out there and share what you know to the world!
If you have any more tips or information about twitter please feel free to comment below!
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter’s getting lots of attention these days. I’m planning to start Twitter and your article is one of the best free guide on starting with Twitter. Thanks!
good tips. love the site taylor.