An Author’s Friendly Guide to Twitter, Part Two: Getting Started

In which I discuss the information you need to present about yourself

The first time I joined Twitter, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I had only been blogging for a month or two, and had heard all the hype about it, but didn’t personally know anyone in the real world who also participated in twitter. My first experience was far from positive, and when I look back on it I’m amazed I persevered. I’m so glad I did, I can legitimately say it changed my life.

It got me my publishing deal.

Now, I realise that isn’t the average outcome of being on Twitter, but aside from that it has connected to some amazing people, people who I hope to meet in the real world one day. It helps me keep track of what people in my areas of interest are talking about, is now one of the main traffic sources for my blogs and also enables me to tap into a very clever, tech and media savvy hive mind.

But at the beginning, it was awful.

My first fortnight on Twitter felt like I had arrived at a party, only to discover that all the cool kids were there having a great time and I wasn’t one of them. People seemed comfortable, there was a buzz of conversation that I didn’t know how to engage with, rules of interaction that were a mystery to me… urgh. Awful.

I don’t want you to feel the same way. So I’m going to give you some tips on the bare minimum you need to do to get started in the best way possible. Let’s start with getting your account set up. If you have already signed up and have an account, feel free to skip this bit and pick up again at ‘Critical profile information and how to cope with it’.

Signing up for your Twitter account

When you click on the sign up now button on the Twitter homepage, you arrive at a simple form. It’s worth taking a moment to give some thought to your username at this stage as that is effectively your public face on Twitter.

Useful usernames (or: don’t do what I did!)

When I first signed up, I had no idea that my online activities were going to take off. As I was hoping to publish a post-apocalyptic fiction novel, I hit upon EmApocalyptic as my twitter username. I’ve become very fond of it, for many reasons, but looking back, it’s not the best username I could have chosen. These are the reasons why:

Many people find ‘emapocalyptic’ a pain to type. It is a fiddly word, and whilst the username trips off the tongue beautifully, it doesn’t trip onto the keyboard as effortlessly.

It taps well into a niche (there are many fine people out there who love the post-apocalyptic genre) but it doesn’t sit so well with the other things that I write, like dark short stories and urban fantasy flash fiction. At some point I may have to bite the bullet and change it, but that’s for me to worry about and not bore you with!

I hope those two points steer you away from the same mistakes. In short, make your username memorable, expressing a broad aspect of yourself (your name is even better, but many names are taken now) and easy to type quickly. Easy, right?

Well… no. It is hard to think of names, and if your full name is already taken, I would recommend thinking twice about adding your birth year to the end of it as a recent spate of horrible spammers have made Twitter users suspicious of names that look like joebloggs1984.

Another thing to bear in mind is that when you follow someone, they are likely to get an email from Twitter letting them know, and giving them the option to follow you back. My full name is Emma Newman, my username is EmApocalyptic, so emails sent to people who I follow have a title “Emma Newman is now following you on Twitter!” and then in the email itself, it says “Emma Newman (EmApocalyptic) is now following your tweets on Twitter.” That’s why it’s important to put a real name (preferably yours if you want to be good) into the ‘full name’ field on the sign up form.

Who would have thought that this would be so involved? Well, it doesn’t stop there. Once you have an account, you need to fill in your profile information, and this is more important than you might think at the beginning. It all boils down to one thing:

Proving you are a real person

Secondary to that is that you are interesting, worth following etc, but many people decide to follow back or not after a split second appraisal of whether you are a spammer or an individual with a soul. Help them out.

Critical Twitter profile information and how to cope with it

You fill in your details by going to the settings section (link top right hand of page) and you’ll see a form with some bits already filled out.

The most critical things you need to get started well are the following:

One line bio
Location
More info URL
Picture (on a different tab)

Why? Three main reasons:
1. When people are deciding to follow you back or not, they need clues that you are a real person, not a spammer
2. When people follow back, they may well go to your site, so don’t waste the opportunity if you have one
3. It will make it easier for people to find you when they use the Twitter search option

Ok, so, location and more info URL should be straight forward. Keep your location as informative as possible. I have Somerset, England listed as I’d like to show other people in Somerset where I live in the hope of forming a local based network, as well as global one. You can say whatever you like here of course.

The one line bio can be tricky, especially if you have a dual identity like I do. For a long time, my one line bio was: “Writer of YA post-apocalyptic fiction, trying to get published without going mad. Hard.” When the deal came in, and my copywriting business was launched, it no longer worked, so became: “Writer of YA post-apocalyptic fiction by night, web content writer by day at www.yournisaba.com”. I’ve recently changed it again to “I drink too much tea, have too many ideas and write too many stories. Only one of these is true. My debut novel is out later this year (squee!)” because I feel that represents me now. No doubt it will change again…

Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m hoping this illustrates that awful first impressions thing. Express what makes you fabulous / interesting/ worth getting to know in 140 characters or less… eeep.

Don’t get too hung up of course, but it is a good idea to try and encapsulate the essence of what you are interested in and in turn, interesting about. Saying that, I followed back someone the other day because their one-line bio read “All the usual toss really.” I wish I could remember who it was. It made me laugh, and expressed their personality with subtlety, but of course, that may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

The dreaded picture

When I first started being online, I couldn’t bear to have my picture anywhere. I still don’t have it here or on my other blog, which many people would say is a faux pas. When I got started on Twitter, I hid behind a picture of a lightning strike. It suited the post-apocalyptic theme, but in time, I realised I had to bite the bullet and show my face.

Why?

Well, people who spend a lot of time on Twitter like to feel they are making a personal connection. So a face helps. If you can’t bear that, a cartoon or drawing can work, and if you don’t have one, something related to your interest can be just as good.

As long as you have a picture, something that indicates you are a real person.

Whilst we’re here, let’s have some top tips about pictures:
• Don’t put a picture of yourself in a skimpy bikini unless you are a spammer (or want to be suspected as one)
• Don’t feel pressured to show your whole face, many people only show a portion and it can work really well
• Look at the pictures that other people use – if you are in major online marketing or SEO, do you really need to have that suit and cheesy grin like all the other online types?
• A location can work just as well, even better if you are in that location. One of my favourite people on Twitter has a beautiful picture of her on a rock by the sea. Gorgeous.

Send a few tweets, even if you have no followers yet

Once all of this is in place, send a few tweets. Doesn’t matter if you don’t have a soul following you – what matters is that you demonstrate you are a real person. I followed back a person with one other follower on the basis of the real person check being satisfied and only one tweet which was “So I’m starting on Twitter. What the hell am I doing here?”

First impressions are just as important on Twitter as they are in real life. So, to summarise:

  • Think carefully about your username
  • Get your bio, location, name and picture sorted out from the beginning, they can always be changed
  • Show you are a real person with the information above, and a couple of tweets that aren’t about making money, selling anything or how to make your teeth white.

The next installment will be all about finding people to follow. It’s not that bad, really. And if anything here hasn’t made sense, or you have a question, drop it into the comments.

Click here to read part 3: Finding (real) people