Time to Twitter

2009 January 23

by Guy

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Hi guys, twit1

For those of you who have spent the last few months under a rock and haven’t heard about Twitter well it’s time to crawl out. There seems to be a Twitter frenzy at the mo where anyone and everyone wants to be a part of it - Apparently even President Obama is twittering!

So for those of you who really don’t know, Twitter is an online service that asks you ‘What are you doing?‘

It is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you to send short text messages 140 characters in length, called “tweets”, to your friends, or followers.

Twitter has many uses for both personal and business use. It’s a great way to keep in touch with your friends and quickly broadcast information about where you are and what you’re up to.

It’s really a cross between blogging and instant messaging.

To some it may seem a baffling and pointless service but on the flip side it can prove to be a useful tool and an addictive one too. It’s funny, I’ve been using Twitter now for a little over a month and watched many use it as if it was crack

You can literally get hooked on it!

So is it a useful addition to the web or just another site that wastes our time?
I’m sure that we all have our opinions but I predict that this thing will blow sky high in the next 6 months or so. I know that most of my friends out there in the real world haven’t heard of this tool yet but just like Facebook, this thing will spread like wild fire and sooner then later we will all be twittizens!

So for all those first timers out there who are and who will be twittering away here are some tips from me on how best to use this service.

1. Try and choose a decent username when registering. I get confused and baffled when I see people using numbers and letters as their name - what’s that all about?

2. Get a nice background on your twit page. I decided to go all out with mine and actually designed it on photo shop myself (talent or what? ).
You don’t have to do the same but choose a background that suits your mood or style.

3. If you are a beginner on Twitter you have to start following people. It’s kinda like stalking them but without the physical exercise. I suggest you look for people who are in the same niche as you. Simply go to the search icon at the bottom of the Twitter page or the find people icon at the top and put a keyword that best represents your niche and click away. Then when a list comes up click on the image that you like and find out who that person is. If he or she turns you on then click on the follow link beneath their pick and voila! You’re now following that person.

So to follow more people go into that persons followers list (on the right hand side of the screen) and start clicking away on that persons followers - are you following me so far?

Now, this process can be time consuming for some but there is a solution. And I want to thank David Brown of neo1seo for it. David recommends using a great tool called Grease monkey which allows you very simply and easily to follow hundreds of people with just a click of a button.
Just click on this link to see the video tutorial and if you like what you see then don’t forget to download the Monkey here ( but make sure you have a firefox web browser first which is free to download) and apply the script to Twitter here.

And please don’t go clicking frenzy and start following hundreds of people because if you OVER FOLLOW more then a certain amount of people in 24 hrs. (I believe its 1200) then you will be banned as a spammer!

So be careful.

Just kick back and relax for a day or two and start to get people following you in return. That is really your plan. To follow people and to get them to reciprocate by following you back.

To get the idea of how to do it properly just visit this site and read the post.

And before you know it, you’ll become a twitterholic.

I’ll raise a toast to that. che-guyvara-small7