How To Get Started With Twitter

London, UK

Follow these steps to get started with Twitter


Twitter
What is it?

A micro blog of 140 characters (this includes spaces), so one sentence. Keep it short and sweet. I would recommend you aim for about 130 characters so that there is enough space for people to quote you.
Be focused.

What do you want to achieve from Twitter? Keeping up with everyone else is not good enough. Like all marketing activity it needs an agenda, time and focus. Think SMART
I would recommend that you:

80% Free info and advice from either you or linked to great articles you know.
10% Referring and retweets
7% Direct marketing
3% Social chatter

Some tips
How many people follow you or that you follow is actually fairly irrelevant! What is important is who is reading the tweets.
I would recommend you follow the top people in your area of expertise. Comment to them using the reply arrow. This will mean that @ sign along with their name appears in your update box and you type in your reply.
If you are quoting someone then it is courteous to put RT then a space and then @name and then simply copy their tweet and paste.
When you get replies it is important to acknowledge those. It means they will be more inclined to do it again thus improving your following of readers
Remember when someone replies to you with a comment their followers see it. This is how you build your online Twitter profile.

And finally some useful free downloads

1) Tweetdeck. It is a small download. It sits on your PC and allows you to update your twitter account, filter all of the people you’re following, reply to people, and perhaps most importantly search. One of the key things about using tweetdeck is that you can search on keywords. These are the keywords that anyone in the twitter universe is using.
2) Twellow. Twellow allows you to search for people to follow. These can be based on geography, type of work etc...It is critical that you follow people. People rarely follow people, if they see that you are not following others.
3) Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed allows you to RSS feed from around the internet. So collect an RSS, send the link to twitterfeed, and then it automatically updates your twitter account when that feed automatically updates. So for example if you send a blog then that will automatically appear in your twitter account, without doing anything but set it up
4) Tweetlater. Tweetlater allows you to automatically follow others, simply because they followed you. It also allows you to send out tweets at times when you are perhaps away, doing other things. So you can seem to be updating, but you are on holiday.

Other reading:

Mashable

Twitip