Miss Nicole Jensen

Welcome to the first installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

1. Get an account. You need a username, password and e-mail address. That’s it! Make your username look as less spammy as possible. Everyone was laughing at @Rove1974 for a bit because he looked to be a spammer, instead of a a multi Gold Logie Award winning Australian media personality. But don’t worry, you can always change your username later. Don’t be afraid to use your real name as you’ll most likely be using Twitter for a number of reasons, which may include looking for work or connecting with fellow employees. Depends on your goals!
2. Picture. Bio. URL. Do this before you are tempted to write your first tweet if you do not wish to look like the millions of other Twitter n00bs. Head to the Settings of your account and you can fill out the basic details I’m talking about there. This step is important as it is the coat you wear to the party, the name tag people can identify common ground with you through. And please avoid calling yourself the ultimate leader or guru of something. I’ll talk about “social media experts” later this week.
3. Feel free to have an interesting first tweet instead of “checking out Twitter.” You can choose to have this cliched first entry, fine by me, I just thought you’d like to start your usefulness early while hiding the fact that you are “totally new at this.”
4. Follow no more than double figures at first and follow people you know or find useful. That is, don’t appear to be a spammer. 
5. Wait then until you’ve tweeted an even amount to the people you follow, then gradually follow more. Think about location, areas of interest, humour, usefulness and even novelty connections.

Tomorrow’s entry will be a short list of P’s and Q’s to mind with conversing with other tweeps. Cute, huh?