getting started on twitter

Setting up 
I am not going to give a step by step account with screen shots showing you to set up your twitter account - I had no help setting mine up and when I started tweeting I knew very little about how to use computers and not much has changed there - my family are amazed that I have got as far as I have and achieved the things I have on twitter, so if I can set up a twitter account you can too!
you need an email address and you need to choose the name for your account,

Choosing your twitter name or handle
I wanted AngelaSmithJewellery but it was too long, twitter only allows 15 characters, so I couldn't have that, my second choice was AngelaSmith, but that had already been taken, twitter then offered me alternatives such as AngelaSmith123 but I didn't want numbers after my name, so I played around with words describing my jewellery and my name and came up with pearlysmith, this has worked well for me, may be too well, as now I often get called pearly on twitter and when I am out and about too! Ideally your name should be as short as possible
You can opt to change your twitter name at any time but this could be confusing for your followers, so if you do, make sure you tell everyone that you are changing and then that you have changed your name!

Your Twitter profile photo
Once you have you user name sorted you are good to go, there are a few things  you need to do as soon as possible. first of all get rid of your profile egg and give yourself a profile photo , I don't follow eggs unless I already know the person. your profile picture can be anything you like, but remember that it is the first thing people see when your tweets appear on the twitter time lines so if you are a business make it professional, either a logo or a photo of you maybe including an aspect of your business, perhaps not partying or sunbathing unless that happens to be your business in which case lucky you!!!
you can change your profile picture as often as you like but I recommend that once you have found one you are happy with stick with it.

Your Twitter bio
You also need to write a short bio about yourself, you are restricted to 160 characters for this, so make sure you have all the relevant information that will encourage people to want to follow you, if you have something unique about you or your business this is where you need to write it. so in my case I asked myself the question "what is unique about my jewellery?"  there are thousands of people out there making jewellery, but how many knit tiaras? well I am sure there are a few more that have knitted them now than there was before I put it on my bio, it is a talking point when people find me and follow I have people tweet to me to say they have followed me because they are intrigued about my knitted tiaras! - Again you can go back and tweak your bio whenever you want!

Now you are ready to start tweeting. but that can be saved for my next post

A quick introduction

I often get asked how to use twitter.
If you enjoy chatting, you will enjoy twitter, it is as simple as chatting, in fact it is easier than chatting, as no one is watching you! basically, twitter is a conversation, or lots of conversations all going on at the same time and you just choose which conversations you want to enter and which ones you want to ignore.
You can use twitter to follow celebrities, to follow news, to keep in touch with friends, to make new friends, to share events, to promote businesses, to show off photos and so much more.
I have been tweeting for a few years now and have gained over 10,000 followers, that may seem like a lot to you but many of my followers and people I follow have several more thousand followers than me! I still remember when I gained my 100th follower and how amazing I found that! saying that twitter has never been about numbers to me, (even if I did do a small run of tweets to push for that 10,000th follower) I have met some lovely people through twitter from all over the UK and further afield,  and some I have now met in person as a direct result of tweeting with them. I have often met local people for the first time and discovered that we follow each other on twitter, a useful conversation starter. and could act as an ice breaker!  
If you have just read this having recently set up your own twitter account please feel fee to follow me, just search @pearlysmith  on the twitter search bar - If you also send me a tweet to say you have followed me having visited my twitter blog, I will follow you back as I know how important it is to have followers when starting on your twitter journey.
If you are still too nervous to set up a twitter account, do not worry, I will be sharing tips about setting up accounts in my next blog post on here later!
but for those of you already tweeting hopefully I will see more of you over on twitter, bye for now!
Angela