First you need to head to www.twitter.com and set up an account. You just need to click on sign up, choose a unique username and fill out your basic information.

It is worth loading up a picture and filling out your bio information so people know your interests.

Once you have set up the basics on twitter you need to start tweeting yourself. Gradually you will begin to gain followers if people are interested in what you have to say.

You will start off with a blank feed. You need to choose people to follow who interest you. To do this you need to click on find people and you can search in a number of ways. You can search for specific names, companies or hobbies. A different way to find people is to look through the lists other people follow. Soon when you are following a number of people their tweets will show in your main feed (Home).

You are limited to 140 characters in each of your tweets. When adding messages it is important to remember they can be viewed by any member of the public. Anyone can opt to follow you and will see your main stream messages. If you write a simple message in the box it will be seen by all your followers.

How you format other messages will affect which feeds they will appear in. When responding to a specific person you need to use their username and the @ sign to address them. You do not need to type this in just click reply. This option will appear when you hover over the message.

A response message should appear like this:

@katylittlelady Hello!

When the @ symbol is at the start of the message the tweeter and the person they have addressed will be able to see the message. It will also appear in the feed of anyone who follows both these people. It is by no means a private message but will not be seen in all your followers’ feeds either.

If you want all your followers to see a message you need to put something in front of the @ sign.

Hi @katylittlelady (Would be seen by all followers).

You can send a direct message (DM) if you want the information to be completely private. You can only send direct messages if both parties are following each other.

A way of sharing information on twitter is using the retweet (RT) facility. There is a function button next to reply on twitter allowing you to do this. You may wish to share an interesting article or comment with your own followers so use this button function to do this.

The format looks like this:

RT @katylittlelady

This is the best way of sharing information more widely.