How to Use Twitter – Complete Beginner’s Guide

May 13, 2020

People

By Howfinity

30 Comments

Watch at: 00:00 / 00:00:20everyone in today's how-to video I wantto show you how to use Twitter so ifyou're new to the Twitter platform or ifyou haven't used it for a while this isthe right video for you it's gonna be acomplete beginners guide to TwitterTwitter is one of the original socialmedia platforms it's been around since2006 and he was a text-based platform soyou could only share your thoughts inWatch at: 00:20 / 00:40text but now they've added a lot morelike sharing videos and images to andTwitter has over 300 million users atthe time that I'm recording this andit's a publicly traded company in theu.s. meaning you could buy Twitterstocks let's jump on the computer I'mgonna show you how to sign up fortwitter at twitter.com/zeromd separateWatch at: 00:40 / 01:00video and I'll put a link to it in thedescription but this is gonna cover allthe fundamentals of using Twitter youcould go to twitter.com here to go aheadand sign up for an account and if you'vepreviously made one simply login to thataccount but what's nice about Twitter isyou could actually search the websiteWatch at: 01:00 / 01:20here or look at all these different tabsand explore Twitter here of what it hasto offer before even creating an accountso we'll go ahead and create an accountbut I wanted to show you that this wasavailable so the search option here ontop or all these tabs where you couldexplore different topics here orWatch at: 01:20 / 01:40available on the home page let's goahead and press sign up and it's a verysimple signup process the name you wanta phone number or email instead and yourbirthday here because you have to be atleast 13 years old to use Twitter soI'll go through the signup process and Ijust come to the signup page so this isgonna be my username right on top andWatch at: 01:40 / 02:00I'll press sign up and if you used anemail or phone number you most likelyhave to verify with a verification codeand I'll have to create a password soI'll just go ahead and create that rightnow and if you want to put a profilepicture here you could just upload it onthis page so I'll go ahead and add minehere I'll just use the logo here this isgonna be a business profile and I'llWatch at: 02:00 / 02:20press apply and I could press Next youcan fill out your bio here or skip fornow and you could add some of yourinterest here so it kind of customizesthe homepage for you so you could justchoose from a variety of differenttopics here thehave to be just a few choose as many asyou like and then you could press nextthen it's gonna recommend some people toWatch at: 02:20 / 02:40follow here so choose as many as youlike here and press follow on top andthis is what the home page looks likeagain if you follow people they're gonnashow up here if you don't follow anyonethis area might be empty for you so itdefinitely works best if you follow atleast a handful of people so as youscroll through this you'll see theirtweets right in the center of the pageWatch at: 02:40 / 03:00and this on top here right on the homepage what's happening this is where youwould compose your tweet so whatever youwant to say goes here and you have someother options here so let's go ahead anddo our first tweet so it's called atweet here when you use Twitter here tokind of write out your thoughts and thisused to be limited to 140 characters soWatch at: 03:00 / 03:20each letter here counts as a characterincluding spaces but back in 2017 theyextended it to 280 characters and as youtype more you could see a fill out yousee this line here fill out so that'show many characters you could have untilit fills out very useful option there soif I just press tweet now it's gonnacreate this tweet but let me show youWatch at: 03:20 / 03:40some other options here over here youcould basically add attachments here soif I choose this image attachment it'sgonna get access to my photo library andI could go ahead and add an attachmenthere if I wanted to do that I could goahead and click that attachment andactually change the size of it changethe cropping of it if I wanted to so onthe bottom of the page you basicallyWatch at: 03:40 / 04:00could zoom things in and out you couldchange the aspect of them so you couldbe a little bit different you can movethem around and then you could go aheadand save them if it looks ok if you wantto add that attachment to your tweet soI could go ahead and save that andthat's gonna go along with my firsttweet if I change my mind I could alwaysclick X I don't have to add an imageWatch at: 04:00 / 04:20same thing with gifts here so you goahead and select or search from allthese different ones if you want to addthese to your tweet again your text willgo along with itso that's an option you have here youhave your polls this is basically amultiple choice question and you can runa length of time of how long you wantthis to be up so your question will goWatch at: 04:20 / 04:40here the choices would go here and thelength of time would be here I'll goahead and remove it for now and then youhavethe emoji option so as long as yourcursor is here and you select emojis youcould go ahead and add emojis to the endof wherever your cursor ends up so if Iwanted to add a smiley face that willadd it just like that and I could go inWatch at: 04:40 / 05:00a search or select one of these othercategories here to add more for exampleand another useful option inside of thecomposing a tweet option is this plussign if you press this you couldactually add another tweet to your firsttweet so this way you could kind of tella longer story and you still have thesefour options here to add any of theseWatch at: 05:00 / 05:20options here to the other tweet but it'sbasically gonna tweet multiple differenttweets at the same time because you dohave that character limit on each onebut people use this all the time to tella longer story that requires more than280 characters all press X out of thisone and I'll press discard and I got ridof my full tweet so if you do press thatWatch at: 05:20 / 05:40plus sign the original tweet youcomposed if you change your mind willdisappear tooso I'll retype it and you could go aheadand press tweet right here and it willbasically post it on the wall so who'sgonna see this tweet well right now noone's gonna see it because no one isfollowing me but as people start tofollow you they'll basically see tweetsWatch at: 05:40 / 06:00like Elon Musk suite is showing up hereon my wall because I followed them so asyou make more tweets people are gonnasee them on their feet here and undereach tweet after you post one or fromother people to like they'll have thesame options underneath each one so Iwant to show you some of these optionshere this first one here basically is areply to your own tweet or reply toWatch at: 06:00 / 06:20someone else's so if you click it onyour own tweet it's gonna add anothertweet as a reply and if you press it onother people's it's gonna basicallycreate a reply to their tweet the nextone here this one is very useful this iscalled a retweet if you click it retweetis basically you sharing a tweet on yourWatch at: 06:20 / 06:40page so this is my Twitter account andif I press retweet on any tweet I couldgo ahead and retweet that now you can dothis to your own or you could do it toother people so whichever one makes themost sense so if I wanted to do thisElon Musk one for example I could goahead and press it and retweet it and itwill show up on my page soWatch at: 06:40 / 07:00if I go to my page by clicking my app ofthe day icon here if I click that youcould see on my home page that I had thetwo tweets that are created and the oneI retweeted here will explore this pagea little bit more in a second let mejust go back to the same page we were onbefore you could also Heart tweet soWatch at: 07:00 / 07:20this is like a way to say this is one ofmy favorite tweets so that I'll give ita heart you could press the upload iconhere and send it as a direct message nowTwitter has a whole messaging systemdirect messages where you could directmessage individual people meaning havingone-on-one conversationsbesides these public tweets so that'sanother thing we'll explore in a secondWatch at: 07:20 / 07:40you could also copy the link to thetweet too so you could explore these twooptions a little bit more and you havethese three lines that show you kind ofthe analytics of your engagement and howmany people saw this so the impressionsshow that and the total engagement ishow many people interacted with it likegave it a heart or retweeted it andfinally you have this little down arrowWatch at: 07:40 / 08:00here if you click it you could go aheadand delete one of these if you don'tlike one of the tweets you create it youcould delete it you could pin it to yourprofile and I'll explore that on theprofile page so I'll go ahead and pinthis one and I'll press pin so I couldshow you in the profile window I couldembed it this basically gives you anembed code so if you want to put this ona website for example to make it lookWatch at: 08:00 / 08:20like this you could do that using thatoption and you could click the viewactivity which basically shows you thesame analytics that I showed you withthis icon so that does the same thingyou could have links to videos if youwant to share videos that's a way youwould do that so let me pull a videohere to show you what that looks like sofor example if I wanted to share one ofWatch at: 08:20 / 08:40the videos I would say have you seenthis and I would copy and paste the linkso I'm just pasting link here from aYouTube video and I could go ahead andtweet that and people will get a linkhere that they could click to go to thatYouTube video besides using this topwindow here to tweets you could alsoclick this option on the left side andit will open up this window here kind ofWatch at: 08:40 / 09:00works the same way you still have thefour options you still couple links tovideos but I just wanted to show youthat this was not the only place tocreate your tweet you could just simplypress this on the left side so let'sjump in our profile and explore that soon any tweet that you've created youlike your profile name here to go thereor the options on the left side we'llexplore some of these other ones too butWatch at: 09:00 / 09:20I'll click profile to go to my profileand on your profile is gonna have youusername right on top here this admentions sign that's your Twitter handleso if someone asks for your Twitterhandle this is it and it has to beunique that's why you added a number forme because some other ones were takenyou could also edit your profile here soWatch at: 09:20 / 09:40changing your banner and changing yourprofile so if I click that it brings meback to this page where I could changemy name here your bio your location yourwebsite and you could alter yourbirthday here all on this edit profilepage you could also add a banner here soyou could create a banner and just goahead and upload it here and press applyWatch at: 09:40 / 10:00and this is now how my profile is gonnalook now you're following this is whoyou're following and this is who'sfollowing you right now no one'sfollowing me because I just created thisaccount to show you but as you followmore people they'll show up here and aspeople follow you they'll show up overhere now anytime on any one of thesetweets you still have this down arrowhere to delete or unpin a tweet like theWatch at: 10:00 / 10:20options I showed you before but when youpin a tweet it basically shows up onyour profile right on top so that's whythis one showed up right on top becauseI press this and pinned it to the topnow some of these other tabs if you goto Twitter and replies usually gonna seesome other options so some of yourtweets and replies are gonna show upWatch at: 10:20 / 10:40here especially if you go ahead andreply to someone in a tweet which I'llshow you in a secondmedia is if you post a media like videothis is basically what they end upshowing like on a feed any time you givea tweet one of these hearts here it'sgonna show up under the like tab sothat's basically the four windows youhave on your profile now if you wantedto reply to a tweet that's the firstWatch at: 10:40 / 11:00option the way we reply to our own butyou could do it to someone else so youcould press that and you could go aheadand tweet your reply and it's gonna sayreplying to the @mention sign so thatperson's username here and then they'regonna basically get a notification thatyou tweeted at them or you send them areply let's explore the left side aWatch at: 11:00 / 11:20little bit more so the home option wewent through this is where you createyour own tweets and you could seeeverybody else that you're followinghere but you also have this explore pagego there under the explore page this ispretty much like the home page I showedyou before you logged in so you couldsearch Twitter you could just browsethrough all these different categoriesthis page is pretty straightforwardWatch at: 11:20 / 11:40notification is pretty straightforwardif they use the add sign and use yourusername to mention you it'll show upover here we'll do that in a second -and all your notification like retweetsand a whole lot more they show up righthere messages sometimes require you toverify your account with a phone numberso I didn't do that in this case so weasked me to do it if he asks you theWatch at: 11:40 / 12:00same thing you have to go through theverification process to continue so I'llgo back to messages here and this iswhat the direct message platform ofTwitter looks like and this page ispretty straightforward you could start aconversation search for someone heresome people can be messaged if they'vehad some settings changed but this isWatch at: 12:00 / 12:20typically how you could create a newmessage and go Next to continue to sendthem a message I'll just randomly typesomeone's name like John for example asyou can see a lot of people have thisoption turned off but a lot of peopledon't so you could message some peopleif it allows you to message them and youcould go ahead and press next and justlike that he opens this conversationhere where you could go ahead and startWatch at: 12:20 / 12:40a new message send them a message sendthem a gift sentiment image send them anemoji it works all the same way as aregular tweet but privately between twopeople then you have the bookmarkoptions so on any of your pages forexample on the home page let me jumpback right here to the home page youcould go ahead and press this uploadicon right here and there was an optionWatch at: 12:40 / 13:00here to bookmark a tweet that we didn'tcover so if you select that now if yougo to the bookmark page that will showup over here so if you wanted to look attweets at another time that's how youwould do it there then you have yourlists which by default your pin tweetsis gonna be a list up here but you couldcreate your own list here so I'll nameWatch at: 13:00 / 13:20this how to videos and I can make thisprivate and I could go ahead and pressnext I could add members to this list ifI want to and I could press done andit'll show up over here now basically asyou have more members on this list andthey tweet they'll show up all over hereso that's one way to use the listsoption here you have your profile againWatch at: 13:20 / 13:40that we went over and you have the morethat gives you some more advanced thingsthat have made separate videos about butrunning Twitter ads for example ifyou're using this for business isavailable hear more about your analyticsyour settings and some display optionsthat come in handy like font size andcolor dark mode are available on thatmore option and typically on the rightWatch at: 13:40 / 14:00side you're gonna keep seeing this youmight like this so it's kind ofrecommend that you follow differentpages so anytime you want to followsomeone you either could see it herefrom show me more you could go ahead andpress follow now they'll show up on yourhome feed or you could search for peopleso let's say I wanted to follow theTwitter account here I could select thatWatch at: 14:00 / 14:20press search and right there peopleTwitter this is the official twittertwitter so i could press follow here andi could follow them just like that i'llgo back to the home page now and now ishould see all their posts so YouTube Ijust followed should show up here and asI follow more and more differentaccounts here they'll show up over hereWatch at: 14:20 / 14:40on the home page and anytime I do wantto show you this option on otherpeople's tweets you could go ahead andpress this down arrow and you'll givesome different options here so some ofthem are what you saw before likeembedding a tweet on a website forexample but you could press notinterested in this if you don't want tosee it you could all follow people thisway you could go ahead and mute peopleWatch at: 14:40 / 15:00you could block people you could addthem remove them to lists so the list Icreated that's where you would clickthis and you will add them to a listjust like this and press save so now ifI jump back to this how-to list here Ishould have more tweets underneath itfrom the person I added that member Iadded which is YouTube so that's anotherway to use lists and let me show you twoWatch at: 15:00 / 15:20very popular things when you'recomposing a tweet the first one is theadd mention sign a Mac is shift numberto create a sign and if I type anotherTwitter account another Twitter handlelike mine you basically searches it andI could select it and I could type mymessage and it will basically tag thatWatch at: 15:20 / 15:40person so they'll get a notification ifthey have that turn on and it'll show upon their mention tab and you havehashtags which became popular on Twitterway before Instagram and tik-tok whereyou can basically type in any hashI could type in any word right here Ijust saw this word science so I typed itand you could see how many tweets youWatch at: 15:40 / 16:00had in the last hour and get somerelated hashtags so this is one of theways to get discovered so if you'reusing your Twitter as a way to grow asocial media platform hashtags is one ofthose ways so you could use some of your280 characters here to use differenthashtags as you type in your thoughtsand use those hashtags either as part ofWatch at: 16:00 / 16:19your message or towards the end of itand then you could go ahead and tweetthat and when people click that itbasically takes them to all the tophashtags related to that hashtags couldalso be searched under the search iconso you could go ahead and type out ahashtag and then you could go ahead andjust press enter here and it'll take youback to that same page that I showed youWatch at: 16:19 / 16:40by clicking a hashtag so a couple ofdifferent ways to get there thanks somuch for watching make sure yousubscribe for easy to follow tech andsocial media videos posted every singleday and I'll see you next time