Zimpapers Logo

EIGHT years ago the world witnessed the emergence of a new social networking phenomenon, twitter. Formed in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass the company has completely revolutionised micro blogging after it was embraced by presidents, governments, actors, sports persons and the ordinary man on the street.

Twitter can be described as a real time social networking platform that connects the world by sharing short messages of maximum 140 characters per every single post including pictures, which is also called a tweet.

Twitter can also be loosely defined as the place to find new friends, listen to progressive feeds or tweets and discover new opportunities by simply following specific people. Depending on what one wants to achieve, one can make ensure that their tweets are seen by a selected number of people.

While twitter has been well received around the world it is yet to attract a large following in the country. In light of this I have decided to focus on some helpful hints that can help those who want to join twitter.

Creating your handle

The first thing you need to do when you log on to the twitter.com website is to sign up and the golden rule is you have to sign up using your real name (Company/Individual) so that at least your old friends can search for you.

Once you have logged on you have an option of choosing a pseudo name for identification, which is known as a handle. The handle is the name that you can use to trend on twitter. For companies you can change this as many times as you want to boost a certain promotion, @Telecel_Zim is one such organisation which has been fully utilising this flexibility.

This, however, does not mean that your registered name changes. This makes it possible for people to keep searching for you using the same old name. Your handle name should describe you or define what you want to achieve by being on twitter.

Simply put your handle is that name that comes after @symbol, so when someone asks you for your handle, just say its @xyz. Alternatively tell your friends your username or send them the direct link to your Twitter page via the actual twitter identification page which shows when you click the home button, for example twitter link is https.twitter.com/toneo1st

House Keeping

After logging on to twitter, before anyone notices, quickly remove those default eggs and select your best picture for the profile. For corporates the best profile picture to start up with is your logo then customise your page with a cool colour theme, background picture plus header image.

Using default egg pictures and no background is good as telling the whole world that you are just but an amateur.
Then you should fill in your short biography so that anyone who wants to know more about you can get a better appreciation of who you are.

Start by following

You are now ready to get some recognition on Twitter, here your first most important move, follow people or organisations of common interest.

Who you follow says more about you or your brand more than what you really tweet. When you follow someone, you are simply endorsing that person or company, so yes be careful whom you follow, it speaks volumes about you.

Besides the principle, when you follow people on twitter, you are also poking them for attention; this is the well-known secret to get more followers.

You can get the attention of half of people you are following if you have a well presented biography plus tweets to attract attention.
In Zimbabwe, @Sirnige has used this simple rule to get very popular and has backed it up with good content to grow his followers too.

Your First Tweet

My first ever tweet was . . . “Hello world”. Of course this was my first mistake because when you tweet for the first time most often no one will be looking out for your tweet so slow down on the tweet until you get a following.

Understanding the game  of numbers

By design Twitter is all about who is following you more than who you are following. This, however, makes it a difficult area for most people to trend and I have heard many people complain that they are not celebs so they can’t get anyone to follow them. This is, however, not true since most people will follow you for relevance not your public position.

If you continuously post sensible tweets, engage others or ask questions from other prominent twitters then they will definitely respond to you helping your account to go viral too.

Engage with mentions

First start a conversation with someone by sending a direct Tweet with @username at the beginning of your post, or by simply sending a direct command when you enter  @username message

This gets the attention of the person via an SMS alert if he/she is on the mobile platform or when he/she checks for mentions. These messages are, however, also in the public domain, anyone can see them and you can only send private messages to people who are following you. This is one way to attract attention, tell them what you like about their tweets or simply ask some very good questions, they will respond and you are on your way.

The writer is the  Editor of TechnoMag, Zimbabwe`s Premier Technology Magazine, more   on www.technomag.co.zw  or join us on our facebook page www.facebook.com/technomagzw Email articles at: technomag.co.zw, tweet @TechnoMagZw