A Basic Guide to Twitter
STEP 1: Sign Up! Head to http://twitter.com and sign up. You'll see two boxes on the Home Page there. The bottom one is for signing up and the top one is for logging in, but I'm sure you guys figured that out before reading. :P
Sign up, make your account and let's get started! (Don't forget to activate it via your email)
STEP 2: Get Started Once logged in and you've activated your twitter account, it will begin taking you through a small walk-through of some basics to get you started. LEARN! You'll be asked to follow 5 other twitter users/pages. What following does is it allows you to read through their feeds and posts and keep updated as they appear on your twitter timeline, REAL TIME. I know what you're thinking. What/who do I follow?
The answer is simple. Anyone and anything! You can follow 9GAG, WoW news updates, celebrities... heck, you can even follow the President! So get to work.
I started off by following "@Warcraft ", "@neverendlesswow", "@WOW_news", "@9GAG" and "@9GAG"
After that, they'll want you to follow 5 more... twitter is stubborn. Follow anyone, you can unfollow people at anytime to stop receiving their feeds.
STEP 3: Any Friends? Now they ask you to search for contacts. I usually click skip. (In the bottom of the box in gray words, they're trying to hide it so that you don't skip. Darn you twitter!)
STEP 4: Introduce Yourself Time to write a small bio about yourself and upload your avatar! Get to work! For the sake of this tutorial, I am going to be skipping that. You can always fix it later on as well.
STEP 5: The main courses Aaaaand here we go, Your twitter adventure begins. First thing's first, you're on your HOME page now. Over here you can see we have 4 boxes on the left, and a larger/longer one to the right. Let's begin on the left, bottom down. These are the default widgets set for your account.
The first box is your account information. How many pages you are following, how many people follow you, and how many tweets you've tweeted thus far.
The second box down is the "Who to follow" box. It suggests/recommends people you'd might like to follow based on who you already are following.
The third box down is the trends box. It will show the worldwide/region-wide most trending subjects being discussed on twitter at the very moment!
The fourth box is the default box for general twitter information and links you might need for support at some point, doubtful though.
Alright, the hard part is up now. The largest box is the "Tweets" box. This is a box that basically shows tweets from everyone you follow. I know what you're thinking. What on earth is a tweet? We'll get to that right now, basic twitter terminology!
Tweet: A tweet is the most commonly used twitter term. It's basically a status/news update of what is happening. When someone tweets, they're letting you know what they're up to. It's like a Facebook status, but more general. You're able to keep track of what people you're interested in are up to and learn more!
Retweet: A Re-tweet says it all. When someone tweets something, you have the option to "re-tweet" their tweet. This basically means that you can share their tweet with everyone who follows you. Sounds confusing? It's not, and I'll use an example!
Let's say I am a celebrity with thousands of followers. I tweeted "Hello followers, I'm off to the beach today! Grab your friends and come and join me!"
Now, you want your friends to know that I'm (why did I just type she) inviting everyone to join me, but your friends don't follow me, they only follow you. They'll never see my tweet! Don't panic, that's where a re-tweet comes in handy. If you click my tweet and then hit retweet, it will post my tweet once again but on your timeline, this way people who follow you only and NOT me will be able to see my tweet thanks to you. You're a life saver!
Favorite: When you favorite something, you're basically saying you love that tweet, or you think it's useful and want to keep it saved somewhere for future reference. Tweets by others do get lost from your time-line at some point and become ridiculously hard to find later on, so you want to favorite that on the spot that way you can access it anytime in the future when needed!
Hashtags: What are hashtags, a very very common question. Hashtags are words or phrases (w/o spaces) that begin with this symbol #. No, that is not a "number" symbol, it is actually called a hashtag. Hashtags are pretty much the trend nowadays, people use them everywhere! Facebook, instagram, tublr, etc.
What hashtags do is, they create a hyperlink that will search for anything based on the topic of your hashtags when clicked. I know, words sound confusing, so let's give examples.
Let's say people are tweeting about a festival that you weren't able to make since you had no tickets. where do you keep track of the live updates of the festival!? People are sure to be tweeting about it, they always do, so no you don't use the the search box and search "Bay Rock Festival" (pretend that's the name of it) you use the searchbox and type #bayrockfestival and you'll have access to ALL the tweets about the festival and tweets using that hashtag. You can make your own hashtags and several other ones too. #food, #fasdfasdf, #theeasylife but remember, no spaces in the tag or else part of your hashtag will be missing. Also, if you see a tweet that uses a hashtag, click it, watch and see what happens. You'll be directed to a wonderful land of hashtags! So get practicing, use of hashtags let's everyone know what's going on and what your up to, stay in touch!
@Mentions: What is @ used for? It's basically a way of tagging people. Let's say I'm friends with Johnny Depp. I want to mention him in my tweet, just got back from a dinner trip with him. I would tweet something like this. "Just got back from a fun evening with @JohnnyDepp, thanks for the dinner buddy!" and this way he will be notified that I had mentioned him in my tweet, allowing him to swiftly reply without having to look for all my tweets to see if I mentioned him or not.
STEP 6: User Panel (Connect) Now, back to the top bar. You see "HOME", "@CONNECT", "#DISCOVER" and "ME". We're done with home, so head to @CONNECT. Here you can see any interactions. @mentions, favorites, follows, retweets and more on you and your Tweets will appear here. Basically, if you made a tweet and someone favorited, or retweeted it, it will show in that page that they did and who did. If someone follows you, it will show they did and who did, and if someone mentioned you, it will show they did and who did.
STEP 7: User Panel (Discover) #DISCOVER tab is basically a tab that shows topics being discussed currently around the world, something that might be of interest to you. I personally rarely ever use this, it's mostly articles on things I don't like to read, but if you like to read interesting articles, it's for you!
STEP 8: User Panel (ME) ME is your page. Look at it, it's not hard to comprehend at all. Anyone can figure out what it does, so explore!
STEP 9: Searching, Settings and Tweeting The searchbox can be used for three main purposes.
-Searching for something
-Searching for #hastags on topics
-Searching for @users to follow
Remember to use @[username here] when searching for people, #[hashtag here] for hashtags and nothing for anything! See how easy it is?
The gear icon. What is it? It's your user CP access panel, click it and see.
Finally, the only blue button up there. THE TWEET BUTTON! This is the button you want to use to compose new tweets. You have a 140 character limit, no more, and the ability to update your location, a photo or even a video.
FINAL STEP: Dive in! There you go, now you have been introduced to the basics of twitter. So what's next? What comes last? EXPLORATION. Begin trying out what you've just learned, implement and put to test. You learn best from actually doing! Remember, have fun!
Thanks to Looby for making this guide