Let’s Get Started With Twitter!

Have you wanted to add your own voice to the Saturday night Tweetstorm to stop the P2P committee?  Have you been hesitant to join in because you don’t how or what to tweet?  Then this article is for you.

First of all, you will need to set up your own personal twitter account.  Let’s do a little preparation beforehand.  In addition to your name (public), email and twitter password, you will need a public username or ‘handle,’ the wording which follows the symbol @.  You will have 15 characters for your username which can include spaces, and it can be changed at any time under “settings” in your account.

Once you enter your name, Twitter will offer a couple of suggestions for your username.  It’s your personal decision whether to go public or anonymous or both with your name and username.  Many users are quite creative. It will look like this:  “name@username”.  

Let’s sign up for Twitter

To find Twitter, type “twitter” into your search engine. Click on the site link to go to the Twitter website.

Once you get to the site, Create an account by filling in your name, your email, password and username.  (See the discussion above.)

There are four more steps in the process.  Now you will choose some personal interests which Twitter will use to find examples of people or things you might want to follow.  Put a checkmark in the boxes next to your interests and click the continue button.

Based on your interests, Twitter will suggest a number of people/things you can ‘follow.’  In the upper right, click the “Follow 39 & Continue” button (the number will vary.)  

Tweets by those that you follow will show in your twitter ‘stream.’  You can ‘unfollow’ them when your account is set up if you choose. You will then be asked to upload your email contacts.  If this makes you uncomfortable, you can choose to “skip this step” (lower right.)

Finally, your twitter page appears!  You can customize it by adding a profile picture (optional).  Use the search feature to find friends and contacts to follow, but first you must go to your email and confirm your Twitter account.  Notice the menu across the top.  You might want to click on these items and do a little exploring.  The Compose New Tweet box in the left column and the feather at the top right, both enable you to type and send a Tweet.

Let’s tweet!

A good place to start, for those interested in the Tweetstorm, is to search for “Anne LiConti, founder of the StopP2P Tweetstorm.  Search for Anne by typing her name in the search option.  Her name will pop up.  Click on her name, and it will take you to her page. 

Click on the Follow button (upper right) to follow her.

­­­

     Please follow Anne because she sends out notices ahead of time to alert twitterers about the Saturday night Tweetstorm (7:00pm EST or anytime so everyone can participate.)  To view the Tweetstorm tweets, search the hashtag “#StopP2P4ME.” 

On the mecfsforums.com under “advocacy,” there is a thread devoted to the Tweetstorm which is available for public viewing.  http://www.mecfsforums.com/index.php/topic,20389.0.html?PHPSESSID=su1qvmuk8e4iuqvis37q10rjr4

On this thread are many tweets to copy and paste.  As Anne notes, “Re-tweets do NOT trend the hashtags – in order to trend the hashtags, we MUST copy/paste.”   Retweeting might be your comfort level when just starting out.  Then you might want to copy and paste.  Finally, with your newfound confidence, you won’t hesitate to compose and tweet your originals.

Now you’re ready to Tweetstorm the P2P committee!