Getting started with Twitter

Your Twitter profile page will become your home page on Twitter. Done properly this can be a boost to your other web activities and online presence in general.

Firstly, don't just rush in and create a profile, which Twitter makes so easy, only to find that you have to start again down the line because you have missed some vital points.

Before you start, make sure you understand how your choices for Username and other details of your profile, will affect the impact of your profile page.

Your profile page will have:

Areas Twitter Controls:

• Header area
• Tweet area
• Bio area

Areas You Control:

•  Background image  (large image)
• Profile image (small image like a photo of you or your company/enterprise  logo) 
   

Areas with text you have some control over:

• Username - displayed by Twitter but must be selected carefully (see below)
• Tweet content 
• Bio content details

Click here for a visual representation of these areas on your Twitter Landing Page.

Things to take note of include:

Background Image

• Your background image needs to be specially designed to ensure the best impact possible. It has to either repeat or be designed to fit the left and right narrow columns. The background color should also match your brand colors. (There are a number of templates available on the web for Twitter profile pages. They are usually in Photoshop format. Google this phrase "Twitter Profile page template' as a starting point.
• Don't forget screen resolution is a factor! My advice is to keep the image as simple as possible because the image is not like a HTML web page. This will affect your profile page by not producing a consistent spacing and format when viewing screen resolution changes. Make sure that you test a sample image on various common resolutions (especially the common ones - 1024X786, 1280x720 or 1280x768) 
   

Logo Picture

• Your logo can be loaded as the profile image even though this is pretty small
• The most visible text will be your Username - so this is an important word. See below for tips about selection of username. 
   

Signing up

Signing up is quick and painless. The first 2 selections you must make are your Name and Username. Make sure that you choose these to reflect your business, venture or whatever you are looking to publicize.

Remember that your username will become a permanent part of your persona on the web. So choose well. Current Twitter username rules are a bit tricky.

1) Pick a Good Full Name

 This name will appear on your profile page and you can use quite along name with various punctuation elements.

Pick a Good Username

 i)  Username cannot be longer than 15 characters

ii)  You have to use an underscore to separate words

iii)  No dashes or spaces are allowed. (Also brackets and full stops)

If your company is ABC Fishing Equipment then a good place to start would be: twitter.com/ABC_Fishing or eventwitter.com/ABC_Fishing _Equ

Despite the best practice advice to always use dashes as a separator when working on the web, in Twitters case you have to use the underscore.

3)  Your Bio

This is really important and you have to have your say in 160 characters. Best practice would be to design and layout your words in a word processor first. This will ensure that your spelling is correct and force you spend a few minutes thinking about what your bio needs to say.

4) Your Home Page Link

Unfortunately this will be given a NoFollow status by Twitter and thus will bring no real SEO inbound link value. However it can still be read and used by human visitors to your Twitter profile page, so make sure you get the link right by cutting and pasting it into a browser address bar to ensure it goes to your site.

5) Using Your Twitter Link

You can now start using your Twitter link on your website and in other places. Place a call to action prompt on your home page to say something like "Follow us on Twitter".

Next step is to learn how to Tweet!