The Complete Guide to Twitter



Mark O’Neil
markoneil .org




This manual is intel ectual property of MakeUseOf. It must only be distributed in its original form.
Republishing parts of this guide, albeit altered, without prior consent of the owner is prohibited.

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The Complete Guide to Twitter
Table of Contents

1. Introduction - What is Twitter? .......................................................................................................5
So what exactly is Twitter? ..........................................................................................................6
Twitterer or Tweeter? .................................................................................................................7
2. What’s So Good about Twitter? ......................................................................................................8
3. Setting up your Twitter account for the first time ......................................................................... 10
4. How to Effectively Tweet.............................................................................................................. 14
Finding More Followers ............................................................................................................. 15
Publicising Your Twitter Username ............................................................................................ 17
Top Fol owed People on Twitter ................................................................................................ 19
Hashtags – what are they and why are they useful to you? ........................................................ 20
ReTweeting – how to do it and why other Tweeters value them ................................................ 21
Sending a Direct Message to another User ................................................................................ 22
Searching Twitter to Stay on Top of the Trends.......................................................................... 23
Maintaining Your Reputation on Twitter .................................................................................... 25
Cleaning up Your Twitter Account.............................................................................................. 26
Protected Updates Versus Public Updates – What’s Best? ......................................................... 29
5. Twitter Apps and Bots You Should Know About ............................................................................ 30
Desktop Apps ............................................................................................................................ 30
10 Twitter Bots You Might Want to Fol ow ................................................................................ 35
Other Useful Twitter Websites & Applications ........................................................................... 39
6. Twitter Tips & Tricks ..................................................................................................................... 45
Scheduling your Tweets for Later with SocialOomph ................................................................. 45
How to Automate New Fol owers .............................................................................................. 47
Some Funny Twitter Accounts to Fol ow .................................................................................... 49

Don’t miss out on our other cool manuals! ..................................................................................... 52



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The Complete Guide to Twitter
1. Introduction - What is Twitter?

Twitter has come a long way since its inception in 2006. Back at the beginning, it was just a bunch of
people telling the whole world what they were doing right at that very minute. So you were subjected to
banal messages such as “just had breakfast!” and “going out to work soon!”It was messages like these
that really turned me off to Twitter when I first discovered it. The service was initially dismissed by
some critics as “a platform for mediocrity” and at first I tended to agree with them.
But I and many critics were ultimately proved
wrong. Twitter has come a very long way since
2006 and now it has become so mainstream that
huge world news organisations such as CNN and
the BBC are using it to collect news. Lots of
extremely useful web apps have been built
around its API and its popularity and page views
puts the site at around number 15 in Alexa’s Top
500 Most Popular Websites1.
Twitter has been used in presidential elections
@BARACKOBAMA , by top military officers @TheJointStaff, by surgeons in the operating room2 and
by police sending out public warnings and announcements3.
It’s situations like these which has led to the verb “to Tweet” to become almost as well-known as “to
Google” and also to the introduction of the Fail-Whale, an internet phenomenon all in itself (it even has

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The Complete Guide to Twitter
its own fan club4). The Fail-Whale is shown when the site is down either due to site maintenance or
when it can’t cope with the volume of web traffic. But the Twitter development team have done a lot of
work on Twitter’s infrastructure so the Fail Whale is not seen as much as it used to.
So what exactly is Twitter?
Twitter5 is a website where you can leave messages of up to 140 characters long for other people to
read. Think of it as the online equivalent of sending mobile phone SMS messages. The messages will
instantly appear on your page in the form of a timeline (newest messages at the top going down to
oldest at the bottom).
If people like your messages, they can choose to “follow” you by
clicking a button at the top of your profile (they can unfollow you later
by clicking the same button). By following you, your messages will
appear in your followers’ Twitter timelines and if you choose to follow
back, their messages will appear in your timeline.
For your messages to have any kind of influence in the Twitter-sphere, having a large number of
followers is a good idea (but don’t go overboard as we’ll discuss later). Some hard-core Twitter users
have more than 75,000+ followers. However, the flip coin of that is that having too many followers
creates too much “noise” on the page and you can quickly lose focus. So some users tend to be a bit
picky as to who they follow, choosing people who they perhaps personally identify with, instead of just
creating a huge following. So the question then becomes “what kind of Twitterer are you?” More on
this topic later.
Once you have published a message, other Twitter users have several options. They can:
• Send you a message back responding to what you have said.
• Follow you (if they are not already doing so)
• Retweet the message (send the message in its entirety to their own followers). It’s retweeting
which has the potential to send messages around the internet like wildfire, bringing your
messages to the attention of news organisations (if the messages are news-worthy) and can
bring you more & more new followers every day. More on re-tweeting later.
• Continue the conversation by sending out a Twitter message of their own, about what you
have said.
• A combination of the above.

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The Complete Guide to Twitter
Twitterer or Tweeter?
This is something which is not really that important in my opinion, and everyone will have a different
opinion. However, you may see me going back and forth with Twitterer and Tweeter throughout this
manual. For the record, I prefer Tweeter (a Twitter user) for someone who leaves Tweets (Twitter
messages) on Twitter. But other users may prefer Twitterer and Twits. All down to personal
preference.


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The Complete Guide to Twitter
2. What’s So Good about Twitter?

In my opinion, Twitter is an excellent site to get involved with because of its ability to provide real time
information from real people. Here are some scenarios where Twitter has proved to be a game-
changing application:
• Being able to “live-Tweet” an event. Twitter’s “moment” when it went from banality to
mainstream was at the 2007 SXSW conference when attendees were rapidly twittering
conference developments as they happened. People could then stand in front of two large
screens and watch the Twitter timelines rapidly and constantly updating with what was
happening next. Call it instant messaging on steroids.
• Being able to break the news live from where it happens. The best example of this is, of
course, Iran when the public went onto the streets in protest of the 2009 national elections.
Iranian tweeters were able to bypass official government restrictions and tweet everything that
was going on in their country. It got to the point where “official” news agencies such as CNN
and the BBC were forced to get their news from Twitter because their own journalists had
been expelled from the country. These messages were then presented on the television
screen to the viewers. Twitter messages also give the news a “human face” because they are
coming directly from the people most affected by the events in question.
• Being used by friends & family to "follow" each other: are your family and friends in
another country from you? Do you have trouble keeping in touch with friends, either real or
cyber? Then Twitter makes an excellent tool for keeping in touch and finding out what your
family and friends are up to and what they are thinking at that particular moment.
• Real Time Event Search Engine: because of the continuous buzz, Twitter can be considered
a rapidly updating search engine, powered by real people. It can be easily used to check what
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The Complete Guide to Twitter
people are saying about currently unfolding events, or to check up on more personal, time-
related issues (e.g. if Gmail is down for everyone or just you). We will get more into detail on
this later in the manual.
• Being able to promote your blog posts: If you use a website called Twitterfeed6, you can
have all your blog posts automatically posted to a Twitter feed as they are published. This has
proven to be a highly effective way of promoting a blog or website. Readers who live on
Twitter instead of an RSS feed can be notified of your new material in their timeline (such as
all fresh MakeUseOf’s articles7). These tweets can then be retweeted to others and discussed
by those who may decide to subscribe to your site later.
• Job networking: in this current economic climate, an unemployed person needs all the edge
they can get and Twitter hasn’t been left out of their job seeking armoury. The site is now
being used to ask for work and to look for suitably qualified candidates. Both job seekers and
job providers are leaving messages on Twitter with what they need. Private messaging takes
care of the rest.
• Being able to get the resources you need: Twitter has also been used if a user needs
something or has something to offer. Need someone to car-share on a trip from San Francisco
to New York? Do you have a spare conference room which you can loan out to someone? Are
you selling something or looking to buy something? Then Twitter can be used as your
interactive classified ads column. No more placing ads in the newspaper.



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The Complete Guide to Twitter
3. Setting up your Twitter account for the first time
It is very easy to set up a Twitter account and here’s how you go about it. Twitter even provides a link
from the front page so just click on it and let’s get your account set up:

The form on the next page is very straight-forward. Just fill it out, including your desired Twitter
username, and press “create my account”. You’ll then be asked if you want to import your contacts
from places like Gmail – this is purely voluntary though and you can skip this part if you want to.
One thing to bear in mind when setting up an account; If you already have another Twitter account,
you can’t set up another account under the same email address (some people have even reported
that you are limited to how many accounts you can set up under one IP address). If setting up more
than one account, they must all be under separate email addresses. If you have your own website
domain then the solution to this is simple – just create different email addresses on your domain. But if
you don’t have your own domain, you will need to set up various email addresses on email services
such as Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail (to name a few). I personally recommend Gmail because of its
superior filtering abilities but the choice is obviously up to you.
Things to bear in mind when setting up your Twitter profile
The main thing to bear in mind is that in order to stand out on Twitter and make an impression (which
is the fastest way to gain new followers and traction on the site), you should personalize your profile as
much as possible. Make it so when people come to visit, their initial reaction is “WOW! This profile is
cool!”
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Document Outline

• So what exactly is Twitter?
• Twitterer or Tweeter?
• Things to bear in mind when setting up your Twitter profile
• Finding More Followers
• Publicizing Your Twitter Username
• Top Followed People on Twitter
• Hashtags … what are they and why are they useful to you?
• ReTweeting … how to do it and why other Tweeters value them
• Sending a Direct Message to another User
• Searching Twitter to Stay on Top of the Trends
• Maintaining Your Reputation on Twitter
  • Stop the f**king tweets!
  • Start talking about things that show off your knowledge
• Cleaning up Your Twitter Account
• Protected Updates versus Public Updates … Whats best?
• Desktop Apps
• 10 Twitter Bots You Might Want to Follow
• Other Useful Twitter Websites & Applications
• Scheduling your Tweets for Later with SocialOomph
• How to Automate New Followers
• Some funny Twitter accounts to follow
  • Dont miss out on our other cool manuals!

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