How to create your first Twitter account?

Import e-mail contacts

Invite your friends to follow you by importing youre-mail contacts in Twitter ( https://twitter.com/who_to_follow/import ). Log in with your Gmail or Outlook account and Twitter will check whether your address book contains anyone you can follow. Friends who are already on Twitter will see your new Twitter account in the Who to Follow section on their Twitter home page. Twitter will keep monitoring your address book for new contacts. In addition, you can use the search bar at the top to look for people you know or who you would like to follow. If you follow them and retweet their messages or save them in your favourites, they may start following you in return.

A good profile

Make sure you have a good profile photo and provide a short but clear description of yourself and your interests because this is the first thing your potential followers will see. Make the necessary modifications on your profile page ( https://twitter.com/yourTwittername ) via Edit Profile . If you’re looking for inspiration for your cover and background photos, check out TwitrCovers ( http://www.twitrcovers.com - covers, header images and backgrounds) or TwitHeaders ( http://twitheaders.com ).

Make your tweets worth sharing

If you’re short of ideas, check out what the current hot topics are. On your home page the Trends in … section at the bottom left will tell you which hashtags are currently popular. By clicking on it, you can find out what the buzz is all about and you can (re)tweet a comment about this topic yourself. In Discover at the top, you’re shown a list of tweets that might interest you.

Join the current discussions

When you notice that there’s a lot of tweeting about a specific topic, join the discussion by using the same hashtag. Make use of the new option to add comments to a retweet in order to clarify your point. Make sure that your contributions are constructive and don’t post too many reactions. It’s advisable to spread out your tweets and to tweet more at popular times (the beginning of the working day, lunch breaks, Fridays and during the weekend). Using a tool such as Buffer ( https://buffer.com ), you can schedule when a tweet should be posted automatically.

Make your Twitter account known

It’s a good idea to print the address of your Twitter account ( https://twitter.com/yourTwittername ) on your business card and/or insert it into your e-mail signature. If you run your own website or blog, you can integrate a Twitter widget ( https://twitter.com/settings/widgets ). Your visitors will then see your most recent tweets and can follow you immediately. You can also send your tweets automatically to your Facebook noticeboard (via https://twitter.com/settings - Applications ). You will be asked to select the appropriate privacy settings to determine who is (not) allowed to see your tweets and retweets on your Facebook noticeboard. By default, this is set to “friends” only. However, don’t flood your Facebook noticeboard - which is destined for friends and acquaintances - with tweets which are destined for the rest of the world.