Social media is an essential part of a successful online marketing strategy today and one of the top social media channels for business is Twitter. So if you are yet to get started, then you have come to the right place! By the end of this article you will know how to set up your profile and understand the basic Twitter lingo.

Let’s not waste any time, here’s how to get started.

Pick a Handle

Your handle is your username on Twitter and will look something like this: @yourusername. Select your handle based on your personal name or your company name, depending on how you are going to use it. If you are building a personal brand, as a writer, artist, or internet marketing guru, you want people to find you by your personal name. If you are building your company’s brand, choose a handle that reflects your company name.

Your Twitter handle can be up to 15 characters and can include letters, numbers and underscores. It should be easy to remember and consistent with the usernames for your other social media accounts. For example, our LinkedIn username is 2 Web Design and our Twitter username is @2WebDesign. Pretty straightforward.

Design Your Profile

Your profile is what people will look at when they are determining if they should follow you or not, so it needs to represent your personal brand or business well. To start, you will need to choose a profile image. This is a square image that will be the visual icon for your company. It can be your personal picture or your company logo. Keep it consistent with what you are using on Facebook and other social media channels to promote easy customer recognition.

Next, you will need to add your header image. This image appears at the top of the page and gives you another chance to visually market what you stand for. The last image to add is your background image. This is less important than the profile or header images, but is another opportunity to promote your brand.

Optimize Your Profile

Your bio is your opportunity to introduce yourself and to give yourself the best chance of gaining followers. The bio field of your profile is also where you can optimize for SEO purposes. So when creating your bio write a short introduction which includes at least one essential keyword for your industry. Additionally, if you have team members also on Twitter, have them add the company handle to their bios. This offers cross promotion through multiple handles.

Some Basic Terminology

• Tweet – This is the name of the original message you send out through your account to all of your followers. A tweet can contain 140 characters or less and can include text, numbers, links and even a picture.
• Hashtag – A hashtag is a word or phrase without spaces that is preceded by the pound/hashtag sign (#). These are the #terms that help you categorize your tweets and allows people to link into topics they have an interest in. When using hashtags don’t use more than two-three and be sure to keep them relevant.
• Retweet – If you like what someone else shared, you can retweet (RT) it to your followers.
• Mention – A mention is when someone mentions your @username in a tweet, in a place other than the starting position.
• Reply – If a tweet includes a @username in the first position, it is considered a reply directly meant to go to that particular handle. It is usually done by clicking the reply button below that user’s tweet. Also, the reply will only be seen by your followers and the followers of the user you replied too.
• Direct message – A direct message (DM) is a private message sent from one user to another. You can only send a message to your followers and receive them from the people you follow.

Now that you understand the basics of Twitter, what are you waiting for? It’s time to finally join the Twitterverse and start setting up your profile. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below or send us a tweet at @2WebDesign.