My last post was directed to those in advertising who have been successful for years and suddenly find themselves without the skills everyone seems to want.  I suggested that before you spend money on a class in Flash or html, first embrace the internet so that you’re familiar with the technology that’s revolutionizing advertising.  Today I’ll walk you through giving Twitter a chance. Of course, it occurs to me that if you’re reading my blog, you’re probably pretty comfortable in these areas, but maybe you could send these links to someone who could use the help. I know they’re out there because I talk to them on the phone and I’m hearing frustration, overwhelm and confusion about what to do next.

First the Twitter pep talk:  In the beginning I thought it was weird, invasive and a little creepy. But then I got a new client who had heard of me on her friend’s twitter stream and I realized I had to check this out more seriously.

Of course, it’s not for everyone, but at least familiarize yourself with what it does and what’s possible so you know what’s going on.  If you go in to an interview and rant about how you don’t know why anyone wants to know what you had for lunch that day, there’s a good chance the hiring manager will write something in their notes like “doesn’t get it” or “old school.”

Okay, so now you understand why you need to spend your precious time on this, here are 8 simple steps to take:

1 – sign up for an account. It’s easy. If you don’t want to use your name, use an alias. If you don’t want to use a photo of yourself, use any image, but a photo is more personal.

2 – you can use the “protect my tweets” option and I did that for about 5 minutes, but it kind of misses the point unless you’ve got some top secret “if I tell you I’ll have to kill you” kind of information.

3 – find your friends or your favorite magazines or news or job sites (@nytimes, @PositivelyCleve, @smashingmag, @TED_TALKS, @Krop_jobs, @talentzoojobs) it’s endless, I’m telling you.  Or you can follow me @annehubben and see who I’m following.  Looking at someone’s followers is a great way to discover new people.  Better yet, look at the person’s lists on the right hand side. They will have people organized by topics like “advertising” or “yoga.”

4 – try out a few of your own tweets.  I started with quotes that inspired me. It felt safer.  Then if you like what someone says, you can “retweet it” there’s a button to do that now, or you can go old school and put RT followed by their name, so it would say:  RT@rubcreatives: great article in Rolling Stones today.

5 – if you’re starting to get overwhelmed by it all and your A.D.D. is taking off, create your own lists to organize things in topics.

6 – if, like me in the beginning, you have trouble remembering to go to Twitter, look in to a free program like Tweet Deck so you can get the tweets on your desktop or Hootesuite which is online, but you can schedule your tweets.  That way, you can space out your tweets or schedule them in the morning for different times during the day. But be careful with the timing so it doesn’t appear that you’re tweeting in a meeting with your boss.

7 – if you still need some more help with how to manage Twitter or get the most out of it, check out someone like Laura Roeder who writes posts and gives tutorials on using social media and specifically Twitter.

8 – get creative with what you tweet – check out @betsyaaron. She tweets a little slice of creative writing every day. It has become her writing practice.

If you’re trying it out and find yourself unable to leave Twitter because you don’t want to miss anything, don’t worry, it passes. The need to read every single tweet thankfully goes away and you get used to the whole process.

Finally, please let me know your experience with this. I would love to hear both successes and also obstacles that you have. We’re all different, so I’d love to hear what you think.  Tweet me, email me, post a comment here.  Let’s talk online with the tools that we have.