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First, you need an account.

You sign up on the front page and supply whatever information they ask of you.

Think of Twitter as a time line. When someone posts an update or “tweet” and you are following that person, it appears on your time line.

In a similar fashion, people can follow you and your updates will appear on your time line.

One of the first things you will want to do is to go to the “Account” menu on Triond and scroll to the bottom. There you can enter your Twitter user name and password, and Triond will automatically update your time line as soon as an article is published.

You can of course, update your time line with anything you wish, as long as it is 140 characters or less. Simply go to your “home” page and type into the box. Notice the question “What are you doing?”, but also know that you don’t need to answer it, and boring people with the mundane details of your life will, well, bore them.

There are other ways of accessing Twitter too, it can be done though cell phones and other applications people have made. At the start though, you’ll be able to stick with the website.

Some other things you will want to do at the start are updating your bio and profile picture. Browse the “Settings” menu found at the top of any Twitter page.

You’ll want to fill in a short 140 character bio or less, and when it asks for a website it is good to put your Triond URL out there.

Then click on the “Picture” tab to upload your picture. It can be anything you want but pay attention to the tips on the right side of the page, they are useful.

Of course, for Twitter to be any good you need followers. I’d start by following people of interest.

To “follow” someone, go to their Twitter page. You can access a Twitter page if you know their username: www.twitter.com/USERNAME

On their profile page there will be a “Follow” button. Simply press and their updates will begin to show on your  time line.

Most people will return the favor and follow you back.

I always follow back my followers and many others do this as well. Do not be discouraged if some don’t, that is normal too.

Don’t randomly follow everyone you see. It will be very apparent you did this because your profile will display that you have many more “followed” than “followers”.

Follow those who have a common interest to you.

You can find these by using the “search” tool.

Of course, others are doing the same thing, and will follow you. I highly recommend following all followers, at least initially. You can always “un-follow” them later if they are bothering you.

To see who is following you and then be able to follow them back from the same screen, there should a be “Followers” count under you name and picture on every page. Just click that and you can see who followed you and follow them back.

Twitter is more than the blind following of others.

In addition to a typical “tweet”, which may be as mundane as “Going to sleep all”, you can directly reply to a tweet.

For example, if you wanted to reply to USERNAME, you could tweet: “@USERNAME That’s mad crazy”.

The @Triond part tells Twitter that you are replying to that user. These replies are visible to everyone, yet it is understood that you are talking to them.

You don’t need to follow someone to @reply and be @replied to.

On the right-hand sidebar, there is a tab that says @(Your name). Clicking on that will immediately show all mentions of your name across Twitter.

Then, of course, you can reply back with @(Their username).

For times when messages really do need to be private, there are DMs (Direct Messages). In order to send DMs you must be mutual followers with that person (i.e. you follow them and they follow you).

To send a DM, go to the “Direct Messages” tab on the right sidebar, choose one of your followers to send it to, and type away.

You can also view DMs sent to you here. A number will always be on the “Direct Messages” tab so that you know how many you have.

Many people have software to automatically send you a DM when you follow them. They are often irritating spam like “Thanks for follow. Want to buy my digital crap?”. Ignore these, they are commonplace and not a specific offense.

Simply interacting with others will get you many followers. Have conversations, share links, and discuss.

If you want to promote your writing/any other ventures, feel free to do so. Just don’t go crazy and Tweet notices of your writing exploits 50 times a day. This gets old quickly.

Now that the basics have been covered, there is so much more to explain. Twitter has spawned a cottage industry of websites, books, and “social media experts”.

I will cover four methods:

The Hash Tag

Hash tags are a Twitter custom that makes it easier to find messages on common interests.

One common hash tag is #tcot. Another is #journchat.

Basically, hash tags are anything that has a pound sign in front. Different communities use hash tags to keep track of what is going on.

#tcot is the hash tag for “The Conservatives on Twitter.” So if you have anything to post that would be of interest to that community, it is common custom to use the tag in your tweet.

Examples:

• “J.K. Rowling to write 8th book #journchat”
• “Barrack Obama messed up Somalian Pirate situation #tcot”
• Of course, having links to back up statements like that certainly helps.

The Retweet

A retweet is simply re-”tweeting” a tweet.

Retweet things you find interesting and/or people request to be retweeted.

The abbreviation for retweet is RT.

For example, a user posts “Triond to triple per-view pay. Please RT.”

What you could do, then is to post as an update:

“RT @USER Triond to triple per-view pay. Please RT.”

And then someone else may want to RT the RT, and so…

“RT @OTHERUSER @USER Triond to triple per-view pay. Please RT.”

See how it works? This process will help both get the original message and your name out there for people to click through to your page and perhaps follow you.

Also, if you have something of interest to the community, feel free to request an RT.

“Brushing my teeth Please RT” would be pointless, but something like “Somalian Pirates rescued. (link here) Please RT” might be.

URL Shortening

Twitter restricts all communication to 140 characters or less. Because some URLs can get long, there are services that shorten them.

Some are:

• tinyurl.com
• ow.ly
• tr.im

Here’s a great resource for learning about these: Top 5 URL Shorteners and How They Help You

My favorite is tr.im. Simply paste your URL into the box, and turn a long URL into a short one.

You can also track exactly how many people clicked your link — very helpful for analyzing traffic!

And signing up is even better. You can view all your shortened URLs and traffic data from any computer!

Follow Friday (FF)

These are golden hash tags. Golden.

Except gold only comes once a week. Thank God it’s Friday!

#followfriday, or #ff as it is less commonly known, is a way to recommend people who you tweet with.

These should be sincere. Don’t recommend your whole list. Recommended those who you actually enjoy tweeting with and who have informative tweets.

Using #FollowFriday is easy.

1. Make sure it’s Friday
2. Then put people of interest in your tweet. Always use the @ sign when talking about a Twitter user.
3. Use the hash tags #followfriday (most common), #followfridays (seen it once for twice), and #ff (seen it once). Always use the first one, and the other two are up to you.

This could be an example of a #FollowFriday tweet

#followfriday #ff @USER1 @USER2 @USER3 @USER4

That’s all there is to it.

Using #followfriday not only helps promote other fun/useful Twitter users but also helps promote you as well.

Some may RT your #followfriday list, and most will return the favor by including you on their list.

It’s a great tool to promote yourself and others… karma points, eh?

That’s all. Books could be (and have been) written about Twitter.