You Need To Give Twitter A Try

But I don't get Twitter!

Ahh, but you will. I promise. It will be painless, enlightening, informative and entertaining.

A Little History

Twitter fired up in 2006 and I joined in 2008. At the time I had a writing business and Twitter was moving on up. It was a great opportunity to network with other writers. I gotta tell ya, it was hard at first. I remember staring at my page with 7 followers going, "Man. I don't know about this." Like anything worthwhile, I stuck with it, put in a little effort and before I knew it I was on cruise and having a great time. Currently I'm following 4272 and have 5747 followers and I've tweeted over 47,000 tweets. Yeah, I'm a bit of a blabbermouth over there.

How It Works

It really is not all that complicated. A tweet is a short message that is limited to 140 characters that can be seen by anyone who follows you. See? That's not so tough. You get to see all of the tweets of the people you follow. If you see something you like from one of the people you follow, then you simply hit the retweet button and that tweet can now be seen by all of the people who follow you. That's it.

I've seen Twitter grow up quite a bit. At first there were virtually no images - it was all text. No videos or anything. Now, there are images, videos, polls, you name it.

Following

The first question new Twitterers ask is, "How in the Hell do I figure out who to follow?" It is a really good question. Of course you can start with me. :-) @GeorgeAngus After that a little searching is in order. Quite a few of your Facebook friends are likely on Twitter so click in the search bar and start typing names. You can review profiles to make sure you've found who it is you are seeking. Click the follow button and there you go.

The really cool thing about Twitter is following people who have the same interests as you. And it is so easy to do. I'm sure you've seen or heard of hashtags, right? That pretty much has been a Twitter thing from the beginning. Are you looking for fellow quilters? Type #Quilting or #Quilts, or #Quilters in the search bar and dozens of people will appear who have used that hashtag. Follow them and in all likelihood they will follow you back.

It's also cool to follow any celebrities or public figures that trip your trigger.

What Do I Tweet?

It's wide open. That's the short answer. Say something in 140 characters or less. Be witty, engaging and genuine. See what others are tweeting about and jump in the conversation. As well, you can't go wrong retweeting things you like. It's about being social. To give you an idea, I tweet about 15% original George stuff and the other 85% are retweets. Retweeting is a great way to be social and build followers.

Tips

• Choose a good name. See if yours is available, if not then choose one that works for you.
• Put some thought into your profile. Add some hashtags so folks with the same interests can find you.
• You MUST absolutely, positively have a profile picture. Otherwise, your profile pic is an egg. Nobody wants anything to do with an egg so set yourself up for success and upload a good image.
• Have patience. Yes, it is hard at first but the followers will come.
• Do not use services such as TrueTwit which requires followers to be verified before they can follow you. Universally hated, and for good reason.
• Grow your followers organically. Fer crying out loud do NOT pay for followers.

What I Like About Twitter

• It moves fast. Since I have about 4000 I'm following, tweets build quickly. If I'm in a social media mood, I'll go to Facebook for ten minutes and come back to 300 new tweets.
• It's a great source for news - in the sense that you find out stuff right away. And it's just as accurate as anything else on the Internet if you catch my meaning. 
• I can immediately engage with anyone who has the same interests as me.
• Unfollowing someone who turns out to be a knucklehead is quick and painless.

There. That wasn't so hard, was it? Head on over, sign up and give it a whirl. I'd be interested in hearing about your experience and I'm all about answering any questions you may have.