Twitter in Twickenham

Description:

As a keen user of Twitter, Guide2Richmond has noticed that there are quite a few 'Tweeters' in Twickenham yet far fewer in the rest of the Richmond borough. It is such a useful tool, not only for promoting local businesses and events in Richmond upon Thames but also for asking advice or requesting information from an unknown yet largely friendly audience. The aim here is to give a few pointers to try and help the community use Twitter to build up a Richmond upon Thames Twitter network.

Twitter allows you to send short timely messages to tell the world what you’re doing or thinking or indeed whatever else you feel like sharing. It is essentially a microblogging service.  If you are a Facebook user then it's a bit like the 'What's on your mind' input box, except you have a maximum of 140 characters to express your view.

 

You follow people and in turn are followed by people. The people you follow form part of your network and their updates or 'tweets'  will appear on your Twitter feed . Similiarly, people who follow you  can see your tweets. You don’t need to follow people who follow you.

 

Ideally you follow others and try to amass as many followers as you can. The greater the following you have, the wider your audience and the more your message will be heard. So Twitter is  great for promoting yourself or passing on information or indeed requesting information.

 

To start, go to Twitter.com and create an account. You can give yourself any username you like but it’s best to choose something that people who know you will recognise. This will make it easier for them to find and follow you.

 

Fill in your bio. Say a bit about yourself and who you are, it helps people to decide whether to follow you or not.As you may have guessed by now, it's all about getting people to follow you. Start by following people you know or are interested in, this is the easiest way to let them know you exist on Twitter and some will start to follow you too. You can find people to follow  by clicking the find people tab if you are signed in or by going to http://search.twitter.com/.

 

Once you find people you want to follow, look to see who they follow and you may well find more people you want to follow.

A great way to find people by location, e.g Twickenham, is to use Twellow.com and enter '@location twickenham' in the search bar.

 

It's worth noting that it does take time to build up followers but persistence is the key and very soon you'll have a healthy looking Twitter network. It is also possible to block people from following you and equally you can 'unfollow' soemone in your network.

 

So now it's time for your first tweet! You can write absolutely anything but remember that all messages are public and you only have 140 characters. The quality of your tweets can help people decide whether to follow you or not so beware! You can reply to other peoples tweets and this may be a way of getting you started. If you find an interesting or informative tweet in your tweet feed then you can RT ( retweet it ) to your followers and it will appear in their update feed. Or indeed, you can save the tweet in your favourites. To do any of the aforementioned , simply hover your cursor over the tweet in question ( if using Twitter.com ) and the options will appear. Clicking the star in the top right of the tweet adds it to your favourites, useful if someone points you to a particular webpage or article you want to remember or look at later.

 

Twitter.com is a good start for Twitter novices but has some drawbacks. For instance you need to keep refreshing to see the latest  posts and if you want to add a web link, the URL ( the web address ) can take up quite a chunk of your 140 characters. To shorten URL's try a service like bt.ly or TinyURL then cut and paste the shortened URL into your tweet. Alternatively, you can use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck instead of Twitter.com shortens it  automatically and along with some other useful tweeting tools, makes for an easier tweeting experience.

 

It may take a while to 'get' Twitter but it should be worth it, so come on Richmond upon Thames , lets get tweeting and bring this community even closer. You can follow Guide2Richmond @G2Richmond.