5 answers to people who are afraid of Twitter

I wake up and go to sleep with Twitter. I probably shouldn’t but there’s so much going on from mildly interesting to mind blowing, all the time.

Don’t know why you should join Twitter or understand how it could be helpful for you? I took a look at five of the reasons why people are not joining Twitter and answered the biggest worries.

It’s not part of my routine / all my friends are on Facebook

Start Twitter by logging in once a day and checking the latest news and interesting blog posts. Make sure you keep track of time thought, if you have something important coming up. And if you really like or disagree with something, let your followers know.

Twitter is not about your friends. It’s about strangers and that’s what is so great about it! These strangers share something you value and it will not take long to realize that it’s more interesting than scrolling through pesky game invites.

I don’t know who to follow and can’t find anything I’m interested in

Luckily, Twitter has been working on improving the initial discovery phase. When you create a new account it will ask about your interests.

Then Twitter suggests people, media outlets and brands for you to follow. Untick the ones that you don’t care about and continue. You can unfollow and follow more accounts any time.

When you already have an account, one of the best ways to find new connections is to go profile surfing and follow Twitter suggestions of similar accounts.

It happens so fast and there’s too much noise

One of the most important revelations about Twitter is that you are not supposed to read every tweet from everyone you follow. It’s about what’s happening right now.

If you miss something let it go. If it was interesting enough, it’ll come back to you.

 What should I tweet

Tweet an interesting blog post you read. If you have an extra 10 seconds, I recommend downloading an image that represents the post and adding that to your tweet.

Ask questions and start conversations. At first, you might not get replies because you don’t have many followers online at that moment but that will change as you develop your audience. Use relevant hashtags to reach people who are interested in that topic but not yet following you.

 

You also need to answer questions posed by other tweeters. Yes, that includes jumping into conversations with people you don’t know. Someone wrote something funny? Retweet or favorite! You can relate to someone? Comment and let them know. Someone shared an interesting blog post but you disagree? Tell them!

And don’t worry, you probably don’t have enough time to tweet too much. Tweets only live for about 18 minutes before they get drowned in the flurry of newer tweets.

What about the character limit

When you really want to post something, you don’t want to be limited to 140 characters but there are ways around that limitation. Knowing what to shorten can help you fit more in 140 characters.

1. Drop the meta text. No need to start tweets with “I believe” or “However, in my opinion”.
2. If you are answering to somebody but need two tweets, end the first one with “(1/2)” and continue with another reply to the original tweet with “(2/2)”.
3. Insert an image with text. Your image should be 2 x 1 pixel ratio with a minimum size of 440 x 220 pixels to look good in the preview.
4. IMO, acronyms R gr8. LOL JK

Did these tips help you get started? Or did I miss the biggest question stopping you from tweeting? Let me know in the comments below.