Twitter 101: Setting Up your Profile
Date: October 22, 2013Category: Author: Danielle Azar
Using Twitter for business takes time, energy, and an understanding of the platform itself. However, if you know how to do it the right way, it can be the perfect platform to quickly receive and distribute important news and information to your followers (some of which are hopefully your patients).
Setting up your profile is the easy part. All you need to start is an e-mail address. Use an e-mail address you have access to because you will be asked to verify it.
It will take you to the next page where you can verify your username. If the name you want is taken, you may have to get creative with a new one. Try to make it something easy to read and remember.
The next three screens will ask you to find people you want to follow. They supply you with a list of celebrities, brands, and companies that are popular. Depending on what kind of news you want, follow those that you think will provide useful information to you. I recommend following other dentists you know who are on Twitter, oral hygiene brands like Colgate or dental supply companies like Henry Schein. To make it easy, just type the word “dental” into the search bar to see the top dental-related companies to follow. Whoever you follow will show up in your news feed so choose wisely.
Next you will be asked to describe your business in 160 characters or less. Try to be clever and don’t take yourself too seriously here. People are going to follow people who are interesting and a good way to determine that is by looking at this mini bio. You will also be asked to provide a picture. this picture will show up next too all of your tweets. Some people like to use their logo for their picture but I disagree with this practice. I believe that you should always use a picture of a person(s) who represents your business. Twitter is all about interaction and people like to see that they’re interacting with people, not an entity.
Twitter guides you through the rest of the process pretty well. You will be asked to complete your profile by filling out your location and website URL. It will let you follow your friends which it will find via your e-mail account(s). One important task you must complete is verifying your e-mail address. You will not be able to use all of Twitter’s features until you verify. Just check your e-mail and you’ll see the e-mail from Twitter. Then you’re ready to write your first tweet!
That’s all it takes to set up a Twitter account. Next comes the fun part: designing and branding your header and background images.
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