How To Use Twitter

            I’ve decided to write this post to help the thousands of you out there who are interested in Twitter but may be confused or even daunted by the prospect of setting up your own account and learning the basics of one of the world’s most popular networking websites. I’ve had loads of my friends and family asking me how I got started so I thought I may as well write a simple guide online. If you need some help with learning the basics of Twitter and how to set up an account, read the rest of this post and leave your comments below letting me know if it’s been of any assistance.

            The first thing you need to do is go to twitter.com, here you will find the website’s sign in/sign up page where you can start by selecting your preferred language in the top right corner. In the box labelled ‘New to Twitter? Sign Up’ type in your full name, email address and a password of your choice in the three corresponding boxes. Once you’ve done all of that go ahead and press the yellow ‘sign up for Twitter’ button below to continue on to the next page.

On this second page Twitter suggests usernames which are available for you to use by combining your full name and the email address you just entered on the previous page. You don’t have to use these suggestions however, feel free to use a nickname or anything which is unique to you. When you know the username which you’d like to use, type it in to the fourth box from the top of the page to see if it is available for use. If your preferred username is already in use try adding some numbers to the end of it until you find a combination you are happy with. Once you’ve found a suitable username double check that your full name, email address and password are correct in the other three boxes then scroll to the bottom of the page. Here you can read Twitter’s terms and conditions (if you so wish) and proceed to the next page by clicking the yellow ‘Create my account’ button below.

            You may be asked to complete a Captcha whilst setting up your account; these are the rather annoying puzzle-like boxes which help you prove to websites that you are indeed a human and not some information stealing super computer. Complete the Captcha by filling in the words that are shown (yes they’re meant to be difficult to read) then you can continue to set up your account. If you can’t read either of the words then you can ask for new ones or listen to them by pressing the corresponding buttons on the right hand side.

Now that you’ve set up your account ‘The Twitter Teacher’ will give you directions on how to follow other accounts that you’re interested in and find people that you know. I recommend following all of the steps that your electronic teacher takes you through here since they will help ease you into all of the basic uses of Twitter and make your account as unique to you as possible. Once you’ve done all of this you will finally be taken to your new Twitter home page, there is however one last step to take before you can use all of Twitter’s features. Go to the inbox of the email address which you registered your new account to, here you should find an  email from Twitter with a link which will confirm your email address and finally complete the set up process for your very own Twitter account.

Here’s a really helpful video from Howcast which touches on the set up process I’ve already described and continues on to describe the basic features of Twitter and how you can use them.

I hope this post has helped answer any questions you may have had about Twitter, if there is anything else you need to know or any opinions you’d like to share please feel free to post them in the comments section below.