A No-Fear Guide to Getting Started on Twitter
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Editors, writers, and other publishing people tend to spend a lot of time on Twitter. In fact, that’s why I joined Twitter in the first place—I was just starting out in my publishing career and wanted to keep up with industry news and conversations.
More than 10 years later, I spend way more of my day on Twitter than I’d like to admit, and other editors regularly ask me about getting into the platform and using it effectively. It can be a great space to keep up with what people are talking about, make connections, market yourself or your business, and find job opportunities. But if you’re not used to the way it works, it can be a little intimidating. Luckily, there are some easy ways to try it out and get familiar with it before deciding whether you want to go all in.
My own personal following isn’t very big, but that’s in large part because I’ve spent most of my Twitter time and energy on growing the Twin Cities Geek and (more recently) Professional Editors Network accounts, which I’m involved in managing. When I’m on Twitter in my personal time, it’s usually to read and chat, and I don’t spend much time intentionally, strategically growing my own followers—but I do have tips on that for you below.
Here is the advice I most often give people looking to get the lay of the land and start making the most of Twitter without taking on too much at once.
Use Lists
Unlike some platforms, Twitter doesn’t have groups where you can interact with a limited subset of users. This “everything at once” approach can feel overwhelming to a lot of people, not to mention expose them to content they have no desire to see. (UPDATE: Twitter began rolling out Communities in fall 2021, but lists are still a great way to tailor your timeline.)
One way to cut down on the noise is to follow lists other users have created, or create your own, based on interests, industry, geography, or anything else you want. When you visit a Twitter list, you’ll see only tweets and retweets from people on that list. If you add someone to a list, they’ll get a notification unless the list is private (though even that hasn’t always been a guarantee).
An added perk of lists is that you don’t have to follow someone to add them to a list, which is handy if you want to keep tabs on someone’s tweets but don’t want to see them in your main feed every day (or if you don’t want them or other users to see that you follow them—be sure your list is private for that).
Another type of list you might want to take advantage of is your list of muted words and hashtags. If there are topics you don’t want to see on your timeline, you can add the relevant terms to your list to keep tweets containing those terms out of your sight—instead, you’ll see a message that notes Twitter is hiding the tweet for you. The system doesn’t work perfectly, but it goes a long way if there’s a particular news topic, public figure, or political party you just don’t want to hear about (or if you want help avoiding spoilers for your favorite show).
It’s Okay to Lurk
Don’t feel pressured to start tweeting right away when you join Twitter. In fact, it can be helpful to stay quiet for a while to get a feel for how the platform works, what kinds of things people respond to most, and how you want to use it. This will not only put less stress on you but also better set you up for success when you do start tweeting.
You’re not likely to get many followers until you start tweeting—and it can be rough going at first even when you do start—but gaining followers isn’t everyone’s immediate goal.
Complete Your Profile
If you plan to use Twitter to actively engage with other users, be sure to upload a background and profile photo (whether or not it’s a photo of you) and fill out your bio. Even if you want to be anonymous, having images of some kind and at least a little personal information will make other people much more comfortable interacting with you. Twitter is full of trolls and bots, so users are rightfully skeptical of anyone who’s using the site’s default avatar and doesn’t have a completed bio.
Be Smart about Hashtags
Hashtags came to Twitter in 2007 and have since proliferated across lots of other platforms. (No, Twitter wasn’t the first to use them, but IRC isn’t exactly popular anymore.) If you’re not already familiar with hashtags, they’re words and phrases used to mark the topic of a tweet so that other users tweeting about or interested in the same thing can find it. This is especially useful for communities or regular discussions that have sprung up around specific hashtags (like #WritingCommunity, #StetWalk, and #AmEditing); for live chats (like #ACESchat and #EFAchat); and for events. You can learn more about hashtag basics on Twitter’s help site.
Events like conferences and conventions are often when I’m the most active on Twitter, and using an event’s official (or unofficial) hashtag is key to connecting with other attendees online. Sometimes individual sessions within a larger event even have their own hashtags, which can be useful if you can’t attend a session but want to see what it was about or if you want to share an insight or quote from one you did attend. Not all conferences have a heavy social media presence, but many of them are very active (ACES is a good example).
It’s worth keeping in mind that hashtags aren’t the only way to find like-minded people on Twitter. Not all communities have active hashtags, and a lot of discussion happens organically without any hashtags at all among people who follow each other or happen to see a tweet in their feed. So make use of hashtags, but don’t get too narrowly focused on them or you’ll miss the other conversations that are happening.
And be mindful of overdoing it on hashtags in your own tweets. If you #hashtag every other #word, it’s #annoying to #read, and people tune out. Don’t include a giant string of hashtags at the end of a tweet, either—that can likewise be annoying visually, and people will often ignore those tweets because they look like spam and/or overboard self-promotion.
Speaking of which . . .
On Promoting Yourself
As on any social media platform, it’s not a good strategy to have a completely self-serving presence on Twitter, whether you’re on it for personal or business reasons. Doing nothing but tweeting to self-promote is like walking into a party, talking only about yourself, and not bothering to learn about any of the other people there. Make sure you’re occasionally tweeting about and retweeting people other than yourself or sharing things other people have written. There’s no magic ratio of “your stuff” to “other stuff,” but there are a lot of great articles out there with suggestions. And, of course, like and comment on some of the stuff other people post, too.
At the same time, don’t be afraid to post about your successes, promote your upcoming events, or share articles you’ve written—especially if they’re relevant to something people are talking about right now. Twitter can be a great way to spread the word about those things! Just be balanced about it.
If you’re running an account as a company, organization, or other brand rather than as an individual, I strongly recommend writing as a collective “we” rather than “I” unless it’s very clearly a one-person operation. There are exceptions to every rule, but this generally creates a more professional presence and avoids confusing potential followers.
Finally, keep in mind that even if you make it a point to tweet about and retweet other people’s content, you can still annoy users with your self-promotion if you do it too frequently or if you reuse the same or similar wording too much. If you post a “Hire me!” or “Buy my book!” message every single day, even if you intersperse it with plenty of other content, that can get old very quickly. Likewise if you only self-promote once a week or even once a month, but it’s the same copy every time.
Retweet, Quote Tweet, or New Tweet?
If you come across something you want to share with your followers, you have three options:
Retweet someone else’s tweet talking about that thing
Quote tweet, which lets you retweet plus add your own comments
Post the link or image in a new tweet of your own
Which one you choose depends on the situation. If you don’t have anything to add to the conversation and just want to show your followers something you found cool or useful, a regular retweet usually makes the most sense—quote tweeting or creating a new tweet with a generic message like “Check this out!” doesn’t have much value. But if you have something to contribute to the conversation, it makes sense to use one of the options that lets you add your thoughts. You can read more about retweeting and quote tweeting on Twitter’s help site.
Growing Your Following
Getting more followers is a gradual process, and growth can feel unbearably slow when you first start out. There aren’t any shortcuts, but there is a snowball effect—in general, the more followers you accumulate, the easier it will become to get more. Here are some simple tips for attracting followers:
Like, comment on, and retweet other people’s tweets, especially people who tweet about the same topics as you do. Check out a hashtag relevant to your interests and like some of the tweets you enjoy.
Use hashtags (judiciously—see above).
Participate in Twitter chats. These give you a structured way to interact with other users on a set topic and put your tweets in front of everyone else who’s following the conversation with the chat hashtag. It’s not uncommon to pick up a couple new followers through participating. (See my quick guide to Twitter chats on the Professional Editors Network blog.)
When you share an article or blog post through a new tweet, @mention the account of the article’s author, publisher, and/or subject. If you tweet about a great webinar or author reading you attended, tag the presenter. For creators with smaller followings, this is a courtesy that highlights the creator and may send Twitter traffic their way, plus they may like, retweet, or follow you. In the case of bigger creators, a like or retweet from an account with tens of thousands of followers will hugely boost the number of people who see what you posted, and some of those people might decide to follow you as well.
Follow people. Don’t do it only to try to get them to follow you back—it’s often obvious when that’s what you’re doing—but a user who’s following 500 people on Twitter will generally show up in other people’s feeds more often than someone who’s only following 50. Besides searching for relevant terms and hashtags and participating in chats, one way to find people you might want to follow is to find someone whose tweets you like and look at who they’re following.
Be genuine. Don’t tweet asking people to follow you (it usually repels more people than it attracts—though users in some hashtag communities will post dedicated follow-back threads). Tweet when you have something to say. Just be yourself and follow the tips above.
If you want to get more serious about your growth, there are an infinite number of guides with an infinite number of different strategies you might try. Look for one by a writer you trust with a method that feels like a good fit for you.
A Note on Accessibility
To make sure blind and low-vision users can access your tweets properly using a screen reader, take the following simple steps:
Enable the image description feature if it’s not enabled already and fill out the alt text whenever you post images, including GIFs.
When you tweet with multiword hashtags, use “camel case” or Pascal case (#StetWalk instead of #stetwalk) to make sure screen readers parse the words correctly.
Avoid adding long strings of emojis to your display name or tweet. Screen readers read off descriptions of all of these emojis anytime someone using the software comes across them, which means users have to sit through that whole spiel to read what you posted.
These small things make a big difference and will make sure you’re not cutting a whole segment of people out of the conversation.
Twitter doesn’t have to be intimidating. You can get involved as much or as little as you like—lurk anonymously forever or go all in and become a power user. The key is figuring out how much time you want to invest and what feels right for you.
You can find me on Twitter as @mnbookgeek.