Twitter® Marketing For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Getting Started with Twitter

In This Chapter

• Signing up for Twitter and creating your profile

• Understanding the basics of using Twitter

• Looking into Twitter software

Twitter is starting a revolution in terms of how and why your company communicates with customers and potential clients. Where do you start? Where do you jump into the massive world of the direct message and the tweet?

It all starts with your profile.

Creating a Twitter profile is a little bit different than signing up for MySpace or Facebook, where you list your favorite bands, books, movies, and funny photos of you and your family. Just as you have less room (140 characters) to share your message on Twitter, you also are constrained by how much information you can enter in a Twitter profile; however, that doesn't mean your Twitter profile is not important.

The information you include in your Twitter profile introduces you to others on Twitter and may be the reason why others choose to follow you (or not). Therefore, you need to give it careful thought.

Note

The whole idea behind Twitter involves packing big ideas into small spaces, so you need to fit the most important information about your business in a small space — a photo, a 160-character bio, and a URL.

In this chapter, I walk you through the process of signing up for Twitter and creating a profile. I also break down the most important parts of the profile and where you should focus your time. And I give you some tips to help you choose the best Twitter pictures. ...