Ok, for some of you this is old news, but for others I am hoping this will be your gateway into better understanding and using Twitter. :)

1. First things first, if you don’t have a handle (twitter user name) get it- you don’t want someone else snatching your title or worse impersonating you!
2. Customize your twitter theme and background. I would recommend Twitter Gallery for your enhanced standard backdrops, or go with TwitBacks for a custom route.
3. If you are using your Twitter as more of a business/ personal outlet to build contacts and a reputation, I would also suggest registering your handle under Twello- the ‘yellow pages’ of Twitter. You can place yourself under up to 20 different categories.
4. You will also want to download a Twitter desktop manager. For newer operating systems on Macs that means Tweetie and for PCs or older operating systems TweetDeck. These help organize all the people you are following so you can see their updates on a nice feed. It also shows when you are mentioned or direct messaged.
5. What about photos? You can share pictures on Twitter via TwitPic which is a little more complicated because you have to send your pictures to your twitpic email to upload from your mobile device or pay for the service. The more current method is with yfrog.
6. Ok, now that you have the bases covered, let’s get tweeting! So, just to clarify… The service is called Twitter. The action is to tweet. The noun/ subject is a tweep of the plural is tweeple.
7. When you type a new message to send out to Twitter- you are sending a message to the public that everyone can read. Therefore, if you do not specify who you are talking to by ‘mentioning’ them (using @) it just goes out into the TwitterSphere for all the world to see and may or may not get noticed by the person you intended it for.
8. So, you need to mention people using the @ before their name. Example: if you wanted to say something directly to me, or respond to one of my tweets, you would need to say @gretaeagan blah blah blah.
9. You can also Re-Tweet (RT) someone’s tweet if you like what they said and want to spread it around. You do this by selecting the re-tweet or re-post button.
10. If you want to send a private message that only one person can see- you send a direct message. This basically like text messaging. To do this, select ‘direct message’ or simply type ‘d gretaeagan’ in the new message field and then that message would come directly to me without anyone else viewing it.
11. If you want to categorize what you are talking about- say you are attending a conference and want everyone to know that what you are talking about is connected to the conference you are at, you would use the # symbol before the name of the conference. For example: I went to a wonderful entrepreneur conference called Feast On Good, and when I tweeted I would finish my tweet with #feastongood.
12. Finally, if you want to include links- which you should because Twitter is really all about information sharing- you can choose the ‘shorten url’ button to shrink the link address or go to twi.cc to manually shorten them if you are still using the basic Twitter page and not the desktop managers.

Ok, that is all I have for now! There are many other feature and tips to go into, but these are the basics. Twitter really is a wonderful place and I hope that you all have found or continue to find your way to enjoy it.

PS- if you are wondering about linking your Twitter to Facebook, you can read my post here on how to do it. ;)