There are over 350 million people using Facebook. That’s more than 5% of the Earth’s population on one website. Chances are that you’ve got an account there. I certainly do.
After using Twitter for a few months I recommend that you try it for one specific reason: Twitter is brilliant at helping you find and make friends with people you’ve never met before. Facebook on the other hand connects you with friends you already know.
Twitter can be used in many ways depending on what you want to get out of it. The lack of guidelines confuses many people who give up on it too quickly.
Here are my tips on socializing with Twitter:
- Set it up properly: Make sure you fill out everything on your profile page including your full name, location, bio and a picture.
- Design your profile: Change your page colors and background image to your liking. If you know how to make an exceptional background do it! Update: try themeleon.
- Search, follow, listen and talk: (1) Use the search box to find people talking about something that interests you. (2) Follow people if you like reading their tweets. (3) Listen to the existing flow of conversation. (4) Talk to people and get to know them.
- Develop a Twitter policy: Once you’ve been using Twitter for a while you’ll need to make a few rules of your own regarding other Twitter users. This is important so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Here are mine: (1) I only follow people who have real conversations. This rules out internet marketers, spammers and others who won’t care about anything you have to say. (2) I always block any of the aforementioned marketers and spammers if they follow me as I like to keep my followers list clean. (3) I use the “lists” feature in Twitter to categorize people I follow and to filter conversations.
All of the above are simply recommendations. You will gradually figure out how to use Twitter in your own way. If you’re interested in making the most of Twitter you’ll also want to take a look at Twittercism and Twitip.
You can find me on Twitter at twitter.com/anopenscroll. I’d love to hear from you! One more thing:
