To remind you, Twitter is a ‘social network’ or ‘micro-blog’ where you post messages about what you’re up to, or share information that you may have, or post useful links for others to see, in 140 characters or less. You can ‘follow’ others who you are interested in hearing from, and others can follow you in return (you can also ‘lock’ your account, i.e. make it private so only people that you know and give permission to can view your updates).

Here is the link to the main Twitter site: www.twitter.com

For those who have difficulty reading ‘tweets’ (the short posts) on the main Twitter site, sign up for your Twitter account there, but then use Accessible Twitter to read and post ‘tweets’: www.accessibletwitter.com

Making web addresses shorter so they fit into your ‘tweets’:
Once you have your account set up, you can start posting. If you want to include a link to a web address, you can use www.tinyurl.com to shorten web addresses so that they fit nicely into your tweets. Just go to www.tinyurl.com, type in the long web address and click the button to generate a shorter web address. Copy and paste the short web address into your tweet.

Following others
I get asked a lot ‘how do I know who to start following?’ This is a tricky one. To some extent it just happens. You might find out in conversation with someone you know that they are twitter – ask them what their twitter name is and start following them. You might then take a look at who they follow, to see if anyone there interests you and start following them too. You’ll soon find your community growing. Many people now advertise that they are on Twitter. For example, in my email signature I include the link to my Twitter account so people can easily find and follow me. If you want to start following me, my Twitter name is picklejar, which means my  Twitter updates can all be viewed at www.twitter.com/picklejar

Another way to find people of interest to you to follow is to search for them. By visiting search.twitter.com you can search for keywords, perhaps a word that might interest you (‘BBACT’ for example). You may find people with common interests just by looking for words that they may have tweeted that show those common interests. I follow people from all around the world who are experts in social media, for example.

Replying to a Tweet
Through Twitter you can engage in public and private conversations with others. If you want to publicly respond to a tweet that someone else has posted (i.e. so everyone can see your response) then simply include their twitter name with the @ symbol in front of it in your tweet (anywhere). So, if you wanted to ‘tweet’ something either to me, or about me, you would include @picklejar anywhere in the Tweet. So, for example, you might post a tweet that says ‘@picklejar helped out with an introduction to social media at BBACT conference in March. She was great!’

If you want to privately respond to someone so that only they can see your tweet, then begin your tweet with the letter ‘d’ followed by their twitter name with the @ symbol in front. You can only send direct (private) messages to people who follow you, so you cannot ‘spam’ random strangers (or be spammed) in this way. So, if you wanted to send me a direct message, you would type something like ‘d @picklejar I’m getting to grips with Twitter now. Thanks for your blog post to explain more.’

Tagging your tweets
If there are a number of you ‘tweeting’ about the same thing, you might want a way to mark up those tweets to signal that it is about a particular subject. You do this by including a ‘hash tag’ in your tweet. So, for example, at the BBACT conference we used the hash tag #BBACT09. This meant that we could go to search.twitter.com, and search for the keyword ‘#BBACT09′ to see what everyone else was saying about the conference. Another example, people who attended the G20 summit protests last week were all using the hash tag #G20 to share their tweets with each other. Likewise, people tweeting anything to do with trains and rail travel in the UK often ‘tag’ their tweets with #uktrain. It’s just a way of marking them up to help others find them. You don’t have to do anything to create a hash tag, you just decide what the tag will be and start using it (you can use search.twitter.com to see if it is being used for anything else first). Tell others what the hash tag is so they can start using it too.

There’s lots more that you can do with Twitter, but those are the basics to get you started. Happy tweeting!

Coda Music

Catriona’s therapy business

• Registered office address
• Limited company number (if limited company)
• Registered company name

Alex also recommends putting your VAT number on if you have one (though you don’t have to). Other advice from Alex is to get a good lawyer to seek advice of if you have any further questions.

I’m capturing some of the conversations through this blog today. Here are just a few notes that I’ve captured from some of the contributions – a bit of a mixture here of answers to all the questions:

• Mobile (handheld) scanners
• Talking GPS system
• Talking gym equipment
• Online telephone (broadband phone services)
• JAWS
• Talking computer from Star Trek
• Knightrider car
• Telephone sat nav – very useful for navigating around city and suburbs
• Learn how to text with your mobile
• 84950 – text message number for getting train timetables
• Something that allows you to jump through text rather than having to read through whole thing
• Small laptop with an extendable (roll-up?) screen for magnification
• Wireless technology
• Voice activated PDA
• Accessible, easy-to-use cash machine
• A printer that talks to you
• Would like the telephone to smell like a bone so the dog can find it

As I have limited time during the conference to present a full overview of how to use social media for business, my specialist area of expertise, I also plan to use this blog to post some follow-up articles and podcasts providing a further insight into using social media for business. I hope you find this helpful and look forward to reading your comments.