It seems like everybody has been tweeting and it’s not about birds! One short trip to your favorite hairdresser and you’ll surely encounter the words “tweet”, “tweeting” and “twitter”; worse, you’ll have someone asking you of your Twitter ID! If you are not familiar with this free social networking/micro-blogging service that has been taking the world by storm, then it’s easy to get yourself embarrassed by the situation at hand for the Twitter community has their own “special” language to get by.

The way you use Twitter is very different from the traditional social networking sites we’ve grown so used to. Of course, it still requires a photo of you so you’ll be recognizable to your friends, in case they are hunting you down. Aside from that, you supply basic information about yourself in Twitter’s profile page, just enough to make new friends since it’s a very open community and new relationships are bound to form. You can also change your Twitter background, if you happen to be very experimental with your pages. What sets it apart is that the services seemed too limiting when in fact, it has one hundred and one ways of use for interested parties. Also, Twitter has been kind enough to allow different applications to access their sites making it so convenient to use even your two-year old grandchild can do it! It can also be linked to almost all social networking sites so tweeting will never be a problem.

Before we shake our tail feathers and just to give seniors who would like to dabble with Twitter an idea, it’s not always love-at-first-sight for Twitter. Some users go AWOL for quite sometime right after signing up only to revive the account months later. The usual problem is lack of friends. You see, if you don’t have someone to talk to in Twitter neither do you make friends that easily, it tends to be a tad boring there. Here are some basic Twitter tips to jumpstart your own little community:

·    Active participation is the key to a Twitter success. Survey shows that the most followed profiles in Twitter are those of opinionated people even if they are a little off the edge. Unless you prefer to stalk people, it is best if you already have an existing community there to join i.e your friends, family etc.
·    Your bio can be built overtime but most importantly is that you need to fill it up with something right after signing up. How else would your neighbor know it’s you if you don’t make yourself known? For safety reasons, do practice basic precautionary measures like never giving away your personal details. Like stated earlier, Twitter is an open place where everybody can view your profile—even to somebody you barely know.
·    Granted, Twitter is not a home for your lovely photo collection and users are given a limit of 140 characters for each tweet hence the importance of links. This community is most interested in clicking i.e following links to wherever it leads so give them that instead. Share your loot, and you’ll be loved. By the way, don’t just share, use URL shorteners.
·    Marketers find Twitter to be very useful. In fact, it was said that most conversions or sales come from the Twitter community. Due to this, more and more online marketing efforts are thrown at this side of town by the minute leaving a little breathing room for ordinary people like us. You can either scream “keep off the grass” or use them to your advantage. It’s your call.
·    RT means retweet. It’s okay to grab someone else’s tweet just as long as you give credit where it’s due.

Basically, that’s it. In time, you’ll eventually learn to walk the walk and talk the talk. Meanwhile, test your tweeting powers and bug your friends all day long!