lordlancaster's Guide to Twitter

@lordlancaster‘s

Guide to

Firstly, go to the Twitter homepage (http://twitter.com)

Sign up for a free account (via the homepage or at https://twitter.com/signup)

Nice and easy, just the way we like it (see tips on choosing a Username on the following page)

Sign up for a free account (continued…)

Choosing a Username

Choosing a Username is one of the most important steps in creating a Twitter profile, so it’s worth careful consideration (although it can be changed at any time). Before you get started, have a good hard think about why you want to use Twitter and what you hope to

achieve. For example, do you want to become personally known for being an expert on a particular subject, use it to market and promote your business, stay up to date with the latest news and topics of interest, or simply to communicate with friends and family?

If you’re using Twitter to talk about yourself, you can pick any Username you like, although your real name (or a slight variation) of it will make it easier for others to find you online.

Alternatively, if you’re using Twitter to talk about your business, organisation or project, I suggest that you should always use the full business name, or a slight variation of it wherever possible which will help people find it when they search.

For example, I use @lordlancaster for all my personal Tweets. This is because ‘lordlancaster’ is the Username I go by on the Shell LiveWIRE website which I work on, and as most of my Tweets are Shell LiveWIRE or business-related it makes sense for me to do this,

ensuring ‘personal online brand consistency’. Meanwhile, I have created the profile @shelllivewireuk for all Tweets relating to the Shell LiveWIRE UK programme, which can be used by anyone in my team to talk about our latest news and events or related topics. Note: Twitter won’t let you use spaces or hyphens in a Username and I personally feel it looks best to keep it all in lower case letters, although it doesn’t really matter as a combination will still work the same.

Personalising your Twitter profile

Once registered, you can personalise your Twitter profile under ‘Settings’ in the top right hand corner of the page (see screenshots below). In here you can do things like add locations to your Tweets, turn on/off email notifications each time someone starts following you or sends you a direct message, change the colours and backgrounds of your profile (you can upload your own images) and add a short bio and link to a website of your choice.

Settings page (See Further Advice on Settings on p10)

Turn on/off email Notifications

Add a photo or logo, location, website and short bio

Choose a theme, colours and background image (or upload your own)

Control access from third party applications which can link to/from your Twitter account

Further Advice on ‘Settings’

Notifications – although exciting (and useful) at first, it can start to become annoying and distracting to receive an email every time someone new starts to follow you on Twitter or mentions you in a ‘Tweet’, particularly if you are getting quite a few each day. For this reason, I recommend turning the email notifications off for new Followers and only receiving an email if someone has sent you a Direct Message for you to reply to.

However, without these email notifications you will need to regularly check your new Followers (to see if there is anyone of interest that you would like to Follow in return) and your @Mentions tab to see if anyone is talking about you in their Tweets (an indirect but very common way for people to communicate on Twitter). Profile - If you’re using Twitter to promote your business - add a good quality logo here, along with a link to your website and a brief

description of the products or services you provide. For individuals, upload a photo of yourself along with a brief description of who you are, what you do and your interests along with a link to a website of your choice. A good idea is to link back to your LinkedIn profile (if you have one) so people can find out more about your skills, knowledge and experience as well as find links to your personal blogs or websites.

Design – the free themes and backgrounds that Twitter provides are pretty good and a quick and easy way to get started. However, you can also create your own background image or upload your favourite photo here to make you stand out from the crowd. Uploading your own background image is also a useful way to permanently display contact details for yourself or your business for anyone to see. For example, my @lordlancaster background features a photo of me and all my contact details for the Shell LiveWIRE programme that I work on. Furthermore, the colours are also consistent with the colour scheme and branding of the www.shell-livewire.org website, as is the background for the @shelllivewireuk Twitter profile. Connections – although you can control which third party applications can access and link up with your Twitter account from here, initial connections are usually instigated from the application itself when you first start to use it.

Post-login homepage (seen only by you and includes the latest Tweets by you and everyone you ‘Follow’) This shows real-time updates or Tweets from people you Follow. Scan through to find things of interest, useful links and reply or Retweet.

Your Twitter Profile (this is what others will see when they check you out) This page shows all your own Tweets, Retweets and replies to other users.

‘Following’ – the list of all the other Twitter users I am interested in Be careful who you Follow as this list is visible to anyone that visits your profile! It’s always best to check a profile out before Following.

‘Followers’ – a list of all the other Twitter users who are interested in you Just because someone Follows you doesn’t mean you have to do the same in return, but it’s a good way to find new people of interest.

‘Listed’ – compiled by other users as handy lists of people they find interesting/useful Another helpful way to find new contacts and people to Follow. Interesting to see how other people categorise you too.

‘Lists You Follow’ – you can follow other people’s lists as a quick way to access key contacts You can create your own Lists to file people under and Follow other people’s Lists as a quick way to bookmark and find Twitter users.

‘@Mentions’ – click on this from your homepage to quickly see all Tweets mentioning you Visible to anyone, if people Retweet what you say or reply to you in public (instead of sending you a Direct Mail) this will show up here.

‘Messages’ – use this page to see any messages from your Followers and send them a reply Direct Messages (or DMs) are only visible to you once you have logged in. To send one to a Follower either type d + username +

message or click on the message button located on their Twitter profile. Note, you can only send a DM to someone who Follows you!

Retweets (by you) – list of other people’s Tweets you liked and shared with your Followers

Retweets (Your Tweets, retweeted) – a list of your Tweets that others liked and shared with their Followers An interesting/useful way to see how popular your Tweets are and to find others to Follow with a possible shared interest.

Saved Searches – use this to quickly access any Tweets related to your business, username, website or topic of interest Type a word of phrase into the search box and all Tweets related to that will appear. You can then ‘Save this search’ for future reference.

Hashtags (#)

If you want lots of people to talk about a certain activity or event, Hashtags are a great way of allowing people to follow the topic of conversation and creating a bit of a buzz. For example, the Shell LiveWIRE team came up with a Hashtag of #slw10 for our Shell LiveWIRE LIVE! event in London in October 2010 and encouraged everyone that was involved to include it in any Tweets they wrote in the build up to, during and after the event. During the event we used Twitterfall.com to project a live stream of #slw10 Tweets onto the wall which provided greater interaction for the attendees and speakers, and gave us instant feedback on how the event was going – something we would otherwise have been unable to collect. Hashtags also allow people to follow the event, even if they are unable to physically attend.

Who To Follow – use the internal search to find other Twitter users Search for people yourself, View Suggestions, Browse Interests or Find Friends

Who To Follow (Browse Interests) Find other users to follow by topic or interest

Who To Follow (Find Friends)

Scan your Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL or LinkedIn address book to see who else you can Follow.

Who To Follow (Invite Friends)

You can also invite others to Follow you on Twitter by entering single or multiple emails

Alternatively…use a Search Engine to find people on Twitter Personally, I find it often much quicker and easier to find people via search engine by entering ‘Twitter Firstname Lastname’

Other useful tips and things I’ve learned from using Twitter

Twitter is often described as a micro-blogging tool which is a handy way to describe it. However, it’s also a great way to share ideas and communicate with large groups of people instantly. For businesses, it’s not only a great way to market and promote what they do to interested and engaged customers or ‘Followers’, but more importantly it’s a wonderful customer service tool and way to keep track of positive and negative comments and feedback, enabling them to respond and turn bad situations into good by showing they are listening to what real people are saying about them.

People seem to prefer Following real people rather than businesses or ‘brands’.

Whether it’s right or wrong, most people will start Following you in return once you have chosen to Follow them. However, getting as many Followers as possible should not be your main aim. Choose quality rather than quantity. It’s much better to have a

smaller number of interesting, informative and useful Followers and people you Follow back.

Give something back in return. You can’t expect people to Follow you if all you ever do is talk about yourself and how great you are. So, if you see something of interest that you think others might like, Retweet it, give them or their website/blog a mention or include them in a #ff or #followfriday Tweet (see http://twitter.com/followfriday). Also, don’t spam people. It’s annoying, can be

spotted a mile off and won’t win you any friends (or Followers)!

Keep your Tweets interesting, short and to the point. You’ve only got 140 characters to play for a reason with so brevity is key. Use a URL shortener like https://bitly.com/ to reduce the length of your web addresses and give you more room to play with.

Spend a bit of time each week (if possible) searching for interesting and useful new people to Follow and to interact with through Twitter. Most people start off Following celebrities until they get the hang of things, and then progress on to other types of user like businesses and brands, journalists and authors, politicians, charities and campaigns and even games or movies. However, if you’re using Twitter for professional purposes, think carefully about who you Follow as these can be seen by anyone

visiting your profile. I suggest starting off by building up a list of Twitter users related to your company or specific job role and then branching out from there into other more niche and specific areas of interest. It’s also a good idea to start Following people who have nothing to do with your work but are still interesting to you, otherwise the only Tweets you will see will be the same as everyone else in your field!

For much more useful tips and advice visit: https://support.twitter.com/ and https://business.twitter.com/

Did you find this guide useful?

If you found this information useful or helpful in any way I’d love to hear about it. Please feel free to share this guide with anyone you want and get in touch if you’d like to see how else I might be able to help you or your business. Contact me at: Follow me on Twitter @lordlancaster Email me: [email protected] Call me: +44(0)191 423 6239 Read my blog: http://www.shell-livewire.org/network/lordlancaster/blog/ Find me on LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/lordlancaster