I am meant to be an intelligent and digitally aware person. I was asked at work what my Twitter tag was and had to admit I haven’t got a Twitter account and had never used Twitter. It was suggested that I start on as I am meant to be promoting all the new and exciting digital opportunities. I thought I would start with a personal account rather than a work on so I have created #WorldClassAccid

So far I have learnt that you can’t have long user names and that I can’t think what people would want to read about.

Any suggestions?

Exciting things in my life at the moment are:

I have a day off work today
I am going to he physio in half an hour
I will be going to Southampton Bike Park afterwards
I am going for a night ride later
I am going to approach Jaguar Land Rover about possibly sponsoring the Big Bike Bash

Is that the kind of stuff people are interested in? How do I attract followers?

Don’t bother with posting much at first, but it can be nice to follow a handful of people you’re interested in and check in every-so-often.

For example, I mostly use mine to follow road racing. @inrng is superb.

Well, my almost dormant Twitter site is now following you, so you’d better come up with something interesting!

I don’t get it, seems a great idea for kids and people with huge social newtorks.

I fall into neither category.

I have created #WorldClassAccid

have you? haven’t you created @WorldClassAccid

# is used as a tag, so say you took a picture of a cake, and wanted other people who like cake to look at that picture, you’d tag it with #cake. then if someone searched for #cake they’d see your picture.

@ is basically used as a username prefix, so mine is @stevieheaton

RT is used for when you ‘share’ another persons tweet, so lets say you wrote :

look at my #cake

I’d re-tweet that to my followers with

RT @WorldClassAccid Look at my #cake

I did think my Twitter account was dormant, turns out the doors in my house have been broadcasting their status for the last few months:

Twitter by brf, on Flickr

Didn’t even know about it!

you’ve not been getting out (or in) much recently.

I know, those tags are a crock of shite and seem to randomly stop working…..

I’ll reboot them all, so you can all keep up the exciting goings on of my front door…..

Could you geotag the tweets too?

I’ll add in the combination to the bike shed as well…

Thinking about it, it’s f***ing stupid broadcasting to the world when you’ve left for work.

Right, they will tweet no more…..

I have a day off work today
I am going to he physio in half an hour

Really – don’t post that crap. That’s the sort of thing that’ll get people “unfriending” you (or whatever the Twitter equivalent is).

I am going to approach Jaguar Land Rover about possibly sponsoring the Big Bike Bash

Yes, interesting stuff is ok. Not mundane bollocks, that’s for teenagers.

Just remember to send lots of tweets encouraging people to start riots…..

Not mundane bollocks, that’s for teenagers. stw

ftfy 😉

I had four people following my front door!

Just think of Twitter as a hugely expanded version of STW; there’s lots of tedious bollocks interspersed with real gems… 😉
I hardly ever post, but I follow lots of interesting people, like Duncan Jones, and Neil Gaiman.
Oddly enough, as I mentioned Duncan, his daddy’s latest song was playing on 6Music!

Well I have managed two mundane posts and have five followers.

I will try to post some interesting stuff too

6 😉

still 6 😆

footflaps, why(TF) were your doors tweeting ?

I unfollowed him, he hardly ever tweets 🙂

I’ve seen twitter streams about doors opening and closing with more activity on them 😉

My tips I use when training people in Twitter use:

1 Don’t follow (most) celebs – they Tweet boring rubbish
2 Try searching for subjects you are interested in, find an interesting tweet and follow that person, see who they are following and follow those that interest you…repeat
3 Don’t try and read every Tweet from everyone you follow – think of it like being in a pub with lots of conversations going on – pick a few good ones and join in, rather than trying to listen to everyone
4 Don’t Tweet rubbish like what you had for breakfast – if using it professionally I recommend 80% work and 20% personal. The personal stuff just shows that there is a real person behind the account.
5 give it a few weeks to understand it, and don’t worry about follower numbers.

I’m following you. Be funny.

Cheers JJ, good advice. I decided to use WCA to practice and learn before risking work tweets

My doors were tweeting as I’d forgotton I’d turned on tweeting for these movement sensor tags I bought: http://www.mytaglist.com/

Great idea in theory as my iPhone alerts me the minute anyone enters the house / workshop. Problem is the whole system is completely unreliable and needs endlessly resetting. The tags just seem to die randomly. Of the 10 I bought, one died on day 1. One was unreliable and the one on the front door died after a few weeks. 7 are still in the box.

Follow @CycleHatred for a bit. You’ll soon have something to say!

Thanks for following me (some of you)

Rate my Twitters on here so I can make them relevant for you. You have the choice of the following topics or any you wish to suggest:

A) Injuries and recovery (limited to just the more major ones to avoid crashing twitter)

B)Big Bike Bash promotion and general info

C)Southampton Bike Park promotion and general info

D)My cars and plans progress on building the rebodied modern as a 50’s classic

E) Generally witty shit I think of

F) All of the above as and when I remember

G) Please add suggestions

F) – just tweet stuff as it occurs to you.

That mud stuff earlier was, errm, interesting 😉

Lordswood is not totally dry at the moment. I was struck by the fact it had directly opposite characteristics

I just got a txt from twitter (86444) with a tweet from WCA? How does that work? Do they txt you if someone tweets with your hashtag?

If you give them your mobile number when you set it up, they’ll text you with any tweets to your @username (but only from those you also follow). You can also tweet by texting 86444 if you have crap 3G signal. You can DM anyone with a mutual follow by typing “d: @username your message…” and sending it to 86444.

If you enter gizoogle.net into your search engine then put your twitter username into it, you can read twitter in a more street style.

Another newbie question, it seems to ask me each time someone wants to follow me? I thought the whole thing was public?

footflaps – I think that is something in your settings. I just followed everyone who followed me and yours was the only account that said Pending so I guess you set it up more securely.

I am hoping to follow your front door tweets but I guess that if they say every time you leave the house, you wouldn’t want that to be public which is possibly why you set the account up so the general public couldn’t follow the tweets.

I just tried to follow you but you’ve set your tweets to be protected. You can change this in settings…possibly on a desktop though. Not sure how in mobile app. Just tried to find it and can’t.

Aha, I just went to twitter.com in safari and checked settings:

footflaps – I think that is something in your settings. I just followed everyone who followed me and yours was the only account that said Pending so I guess you set it up more securely.

You’re spot on, changed that. I got a Twitter account years ago, just in case, and haven’t used it since, so had no idea it had any settings….

Rather than tell the world when I’ve left the house and that the key is under the mat, I’ll try putting one of those tags on the cat flag and then the world can follow Jeff and George’s every movements…

I’m not on it, but some of the parody accounts are very funny – characters from tv programmes.

Ian Beale & Ken Barlow to name a few.

@VeloCake_RT @Flabloss @_rOcKeTdOg_ all worth a follow…..well…maybe not the last one

@bigbikebash – follow it – re-tweet it! Please 😉

or just buy a ticket from http://www.bigbikebash.co.uk

😆