So you have joined Twitter at last! Welcome to the party! Now you want to make your first tweet and start following people yeah?
STOP!!
Have you done all the simple steps I am about to show you so your account is in order and is presentable for your potential followers? There is no later with twitter. As soon as you make your first tweet you are putting yourself out there in the public domain, so each and everyone of these following steps should be implemented as standard so you:
- Look genuine.
- Presentable.
- Other Twitter users know who you are.
- They know what you do.
- Why you are there. (Giving information? Customer service? Looking to build relationships?)
Failure of any of the above will mean Twitter users pass you by never to be seen again. I don’t want that to happen to you, so step by step I am going to show you what I would do when opening a Twitter account. In fact I have an account in mind for a future project, so let’s get to it!
Setting Up A Twitter Account Correctly
Step 1 – Use your real name, enter Email address and password.
Step 2 – Decide on a Twitter Username.
This can be whatever you decide, but must be alphanumeric. Some examples of names are:
- Real name such as @StuartWooster.
- Brand name, think @Starbucks Coffee.
- Personal brand name. Where did John Saddington get @tentblogger from? Cool name huh?
- Or you may have an alter ego you like to use such as my friend Stuart Clark, who blogs personally as @moonklash and then professionally as @seostu.
Whatever you decide, you’ll be looking for the little green tick to say it is available.
Step 3 – Skip interests and importing address books. You do not want to start advertising your presence just yet.
Step 4 – Confirm your Email address that will be sent to the Email address you provided.
Step 5 – On the righthand side is a list of things Twitter would like you to do, skip to ‘Upload a profile picture’, unless you really want to switch on mobile notifications or download their mobile app.
Step 6 – Click on choose file and upload a square image.
Tip: Even though the image size displayed will only be 128 pixels on your Twitter homepage, upload an image larger in dimensions so it can be easily viewed bigger when people click on it (I do this regularly on my Android TweetDeck to have a better look at a profile image). For an example of this click on my @TrancefamilyCo profile picture and it will then display a 500 pixel image.
Step 7 – Fill in the following:
- Location – If you are a local business most certainly fill this in with the town/city, county/state and then country. Otherwise you may want to go with your country to stay anonymous, or as in this case I’m going with Globally/Worldwide/International.
- Web – Your website/blog address.
- Bio – Fill in details about yourself or your company, use keywords wisely as part of your description.
Tip: Also mention your website/blog address in the Bio. The reason for this is because I know Tweetdeck on Android mobiles does not show your web address, only the Bio when users view your profile. I am yet to find out if this is also the case for other Twitter clients on mobile devices.
People on other devices and the web will see the web address duplicated possibly, so it is your call. As lots of people do use Android and Tweetdeck it is my preference to add it in the Bio so they can visit if interested.
Step 8 – Creating a background and designing your page.
I highly recommend creating a custom background, or at least choosing custom colours that you are happy with and fit in with your brand.
For designing a custom background I’ll leave this one for the guys at Mashable to help you out with: HOW TO: Customize Your Background for the New Twitter.
Please do get in touch if you know of any better tutorials and I’ll update this section accordingly.
Step 9 - Read the post I made previously, 10 Ways To Gain More Twitter Followers! Then read even more about how to get more Twitter followers. There is no harm in learning, just do not get bogged down so you do not take action.
Step 10 - Your first tweet!
Introduce yourself explaining briefly what you aim to give followers through your tweets. Call it a mission statement. You need to set expectations for anyone who lands on your Twitter page in these early days (or should I say hours), before you can prove you are giving value on a daily basis. I don’t think a couple of informative tweets at this point would be wrong as you need to inspire them so they follow you. Just no selling and no lame “Hey I’ve joined Twitter at last!” dated 30 days ago with no status update since.
Step 11 – Get Started On Twitter
Click on the Home tab and you will be able to complete the steps we skipped earlier such as browsing people you maybe interested in following and inviting contacts from various address books such as Gmail and LinkedIn.
Step 12 – Go back to Step 1 and make sure you have done each step 
I truly hope that anyone thinking of starting a Twitter account for the first time, or even older users starting up a new account find this post helpful. If you enjoyed this post, please do not forget to subscribe to the blog by Email or by RSS reader.
Photo credit: David Chartier