Ten Twit Preventing Tips for Twitter

Twitter has hit the internet, and the media by storm, so much so I think we have safely call Twitter the Internet's newest wunderkind.

So I've come up with these ten steps to getting started with Twitter, since it seems that everyone has, will be or should be starting on Twitter.

1. Understand your playing field. If you work a company other than your own, check to see if your company has a policy on employees using Twitter while at work and/or Twitting about work. If they don't have a policy then ask specific questions about what you are allowed to do on Twitter and get the answers in writing. You don't want to be facing the unemployment line because you twittered-inappropriately about work.

2. Join and participate. Sign up in your real name with a bio and picture so the rest of us know who we are talking to.

3. Select your Twitter voice. Is the main focus of your Twitter account business or pleasure or both? (check item # 1, to confirm that you can twitter about your business)

4. Follow people who find it useful and watch how they behave. Follow some top people to start with and invest some time in reading their tweets and clicking on the links they include in their tweets. You will start to understand the power of Twitter.

5. Get over that uncomfortable feeling and start to twitter.

6. Download and use a client such as thwirl or tweetdeck, or my personal favorite hootsuite. .

7. Find people who share your interests using tools such as Tweetscan or Tweetgrid and see who the important people in your locality are with Twittergrader.

8. See what everyone else is talking about and emerging topics by using Twitscoop. Need some help on what to tweet (verb: tweet – the action of writing on twitter) about?

Here are some winning practices of top tweeters:
* Don't be pedantic. We don't care what you're eating for lunch, or that you just woke up.
* Don't use Twitter just to pimp your blog posts.
* Don't pimp your clients all day
* Don't over-tweet. If you need half a dozen tweets to make your point, do one that points to a blog post.
* Do link to interesting articles, sites, blog posts.
* Do include links in as many of your posts as possible
* Answer and ask questions
* Be polite and don't be boring.

9. There are serious news issues being covered on Twitter such as the coverage of the Mumbai bombings and Hudson plane crash. Follow your competitors and what others are saying about them by entering their name into search.twitter.com. You might as well search your companies name as well – you might just come up with some interesting research.

10. Relax and give Twitter a chance. If Twitter doesn't work for you, then at least you'll know and you’ll already have a Twitter account and some Twitter experience if you ever need it in the future. If Twitter is keeping you more informed, helping you connect with customers and/or friends, then you can call yourself part of the Twitter Nation!