How To Use Twitter For Beginners

To say that creating this beginner's guide to Twitter has been hard is an understatement. Not a day goes by without hearing about a new application or function getting launched. It's difficult for everyone to keep up to date.

However, when you remove all the unnecessary stuff that make Twitter complicated than what it is, then explaining Twitter to beginners is actually fairly easy. This article will cover the very basics that every beginner needs to know to quickly get started on Twitter.

How To Sign Up

Before signing up, you need to have an email address. If you don?t, you can get a free one from places such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo. Once you?ve got an email address, simply go to Twitter.com and click on the green ?Sign Up Now? button. Enter your full name (you can choose to not use your real name), enter a unique username as well as a password and your email. Once you?ve done that, type in the characters to verify your humanness and then click on ?Create My Account.?

Click on ?Skip? on the next couple of pages until you arrive at the home page of your account.

How To Find People

There are 2 ways to find people: by name or by keyword.

If you want to find people by name, click on ?Find People? at the top of the page and then type in the name of the person you are searching for. You should then be shown at list of results, one of which may be the person you are searching for.

If you want to find people by keyword, stay on your home page, and use the search function on the right hand side bar. If you want to find someone who shares your interests, type in that keyword and a list of latest people who have used that keyword in their tweets will come up. There?s a good chance that if they used that keyword, that they are interested in that topic.

How To Follow

Once you found someone you?ve been looking for or shares your interest, you may want to follow them so that you can follow their tweets.

If you want to do this, simply click on their username and you will be directed to their page. Then click on the follow button underneath their profile picture. You should get notified that you?re following them. It?s that simple.

How To Get Followers

The best and only way to increase your influence on Twitter is by accumulating followers. In Twitter, there is something that is called Twitter etiquette. What this means is that if someone follows you, you should repay the favor and follow them back. Of course, following them back is optional, but more often than not, they will repay the favor. The bottom line is that if you want to increase the amount of people following you, you have to take the initiative and start following others first. At the same time, don?t forget to follow people that follow you first.

How To Enhance The Twitter Experience

After completing the above steps, you will find that Twitter is simple to use. You might even think that it is too simple and has no real purpose. The thing is that Twitter is only really useful and interesting once you start using applications. Nowadays, you can find thousands of applications online for a incredible variety of purposes. There are applications to use Twitter on your phone, to schedule your tweets, to use feeds on your account etc. All you need to do is search for "twitter apps" to see how many there are.

However, do not use too many apps at the same time because instead of enhancing the Twitter experience, it can make it more confusing and put you off. The KISS principle of keeping things stupid really does apply to Twitter especially to beginners.