Twitter - what advice would I give - 5 pointers for beginners

I wouldn't class myself as a beginner on Twitter after 8 month of active use.  So, what advice would the now more proficient and able twitter me give a beginner?

1.     Always have a profile picture and bio - people do look at it and often visit the website given too.  It's a first port of call and therefore essential that it gives a flavour of who you are and what you do.

2.    Don't go hell for leather trying to get followers or even follow people.  Try out twitter, see how comfortable you feel with it and select the people you follow carefully.  If you are doing it properly it is not a numbers game.  People who interact with you and are interesting may not be the obvious ones.

3.     Think hard about why you are on twitter and what you want to do with it:

• To promote yourself and your services, a book, shop, product or idea: - Promoting yourself and your services - you have to make sure that you are promoting to people who can either use your services, or know people who might be interested.  Twitter does give you a profile on social media that other platforms don't but as to how effective a selling medium it is I don't know. Perhaps others could let me know.

• Keeping up to date within your chosen field of interest - that has proved to be one of the best aspects of Twitter for me.  I have been amazed at how much information there is out there and how readily people share

• For the laugh and to 'meet' interesting people - that definitely is possible, lots of laughs and facinating people, but beware Twitter is and can be a huge time waster.  Monitor your time carefully.

• Celebrity chasing - you only follow 'influential' people - Celebrity chasing - well what can I say, it does it for some people.

• To chat with your friends why do that on Twitter I can do that in other ways.  For me Twitter has proved to be a network of interesting people that I would not normally have made contact with - so why just chat with your friends?  Get out and tweet new people. 

4.   Interact with people - if you see a tweet that you find interesting - comment and get a dialogue going.  It does rather feel like butting in on a conversation but sometime they can be the most interesting interactions. 

5.    Don't worry about who is following you - or who unfollows you.  It is not a numbers game and to follow or not is their choice - it's not personal (hopefully).

The most important thing I have learnt about being on Twitter is

 (drum roll) 
Be yourself!