In my college class on internet marketing, students are required to use Twitter. Their grade is dependent on it.
I just wrote instructions on how to set up a Twitter account since most of them don’t have one.
I decided to share them here too! I hope it’s helpful!
If you’re already using Twitter, what would you add?
You can put your suggestions in the comments.
And if you’re interested in what the syllabus is, here’s the Word doc from Thomas College’s website: MK337 Marketing on the Internet.
How to set up a Twitter account for students in MK337 “Marketing on the Internet”
Twitter is the only required social media site. I expect you to use blogs or Facebook or some other site for your project. But I want you to get a taste of Twitter. People are using this to connect with friends, promote products & services, and even bring down dictatorships.
Here is a quick guide on what to do:
- Go to http://twitter.com/
- Set up the account: Enter your name, email, and a password in the box
- Then set up your "profile" <– I see this to the right of the search box in Twitter. Then click "edit your profile."
- Put a picture in there (Twitter’s better with faces)
- Put a general location (this will help you find others and others find you)
- Put in your website, blog, or other profile
- Fill out the bio
- mix professional and hobbies or personal information
- use keywords that you want people to find you with
- use humor – humor in bio lines often causes people to try following you
- Play around with the rest of set up
- You might want to set up a mobile number. (I don’t like tweeting with SMS texts but many do.)
- You may want notifications on at first as you get a feel for Twitter, but you’ll probably want to turn them off before long. No need letting these fill up your inbox!
- You can easily use a pre-formatted design for your background (or you can google around to find out how to make your own)
- Start following people
Twitter stinks if there are no tweets in your stream. Use the search feature in Twitter to find people to follow. Sites like www.Twellow.com can be helpful finding people too. Experiment with following people from three groups: - People doing the same sort of work or study as you
- People with similar hobbies and interests
- People in the same geographic area
- Start tweeting. Tweet what’s on your mind. And reply to other people’s tweets. Don’t overly promote yourself. Just be conversational. If someone says something and you have an engaging comment, reply. Or you can retweet their comment.
- A hashtag is simply something that is marked with the "#" sign. So if you want to do your two tweets for this course, simply type a tweet and include #mk337
As you go along, you might find it helpful to organize the people you follow into lists. You should see the "lists" option on the line with "@mentions," "retweets," and "searches."
You may also find it easier to use Twitter through a different interface like HootSuite, Pluggio, or TweetDeck. Most have free versions. And most have versions for your smartphone.
That should get you started!
