It’s Easy To Join Twitter and Get Involved…
People join Twitter for many reasons. It might be to chat with friends, others to stay informed and some to market their business or services. There are many people with 10’s of thousands of followers and each began with zero and all started the same way and that was to “join”.
It’s a quick process and you can start here… URL: http://twitter.com/account/create.
If you get hung up and want a little more help… go to this page: http://help.twitter.com/portal
And for a list of all “help” resources go here http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums
Now, the signup process is simple… however, consider the following tips which can increase the number of people that follow you.
First consider you user name. This user name is important because people will attach you (as they should) to the user name. Meaning it will be displayed in the URL and on your Profile page. So… consider it carefully.
If you are an established Brand, then you may consider using the company name as the user name. However, the belief of many marketing “experts”, is that you use your real name. Why? Because Twitter is Social and people like their “social” to be “personal”… usually.
What if the username is taken? Often the user name is not available so just opt for another. Here are the username guidelines…
- Your user name is changeable by editing your account settings. Some common problems with user names:
- User name is already in use: this means that the user name is attached to an active or deleted account. You can plus the user name into a Twitter URL to see if it is active; if not, it is attached to a deleted account.
- You can’t use the word ‘twitter’ in user names: this is to avoid brand confusion. There was a brief bug that allowed people to register user names with the word “twitter” in them; since that was our fault, those get to stay. Other than those, no account names can contain Twitter unless they are official.
- User names can only be 15 characters long: your real name can be longer, but user names are kept short for the sake of ease. This cannot be changed for any account.
- Username1: sometimes a duplicate account is created if you send a text message from an unverified phone. Not recognizing the phone number, we ask for your user name. Not knowing that you’re starting a new account, you give us your existing user name. Since that username is taken (by you) we give you the username+number, like amy25 if there are 24 amys before you.
Twitter Support :: User name troubleshooting.
Again, people will want to interact with you if you are seen as a real person. So, bottom line is to keep the username “real”.
Also, just put the real info in the signup form that is being asked for. Stay away from trying to trick the system by adding links where the do not belong. It will simply turn people away. Besides, if you are yourself, then people will want to know more about you and follow you URL.
Once you have an account, optimize your profile by following the steps listed here… “Increase Traffic with an Optimized Twitter Profile”.
