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