Techniques 38
Photography News Issue 44 absolutephoto.com
To start your Twitter journey click ‘Sign up’ from the Twitter home page and fill in the relevant information. When choosing your username remember our previous point about keeping your usernames the same or as similar as possible across platforms. Once you have created your account you’ll need to fill in your bio information and add a profile and cover picture. Similarly to Facebook you may want to use a logo as your Create an account
Unlike Instagram, Twitter can be used on both a web browser and on your smart device. Sign up for an account online or download the app from the GooglePlay or App store. For the purpose of this feature we’ll be focusing on the browser version, but the layout and options are similar.
profile image and another image of your best work or for variety. Twitter recommends dimensions of 400x400 pixels for a profile picture and 1500x500 for the Header photo. We would advise leaving a fair amount of space around the edges as Twitter does crop in. You can also make changes to the theme colour of your profile.
Navigation
Moments Shows you top stories and tweets relating to them
Messages Direct messages
Profile and settings
Notifications Displays a symbol whenever anyone follows you, likes a tweet of yours, retweets it or mentions you within a tweet
Search bar
Compose a tweet
Home Takes you to the home page
Create a tweet
tag people. From a previous point, you can again tag people you’ve worked with, who will be notified that you have mentioned them in a post. Alternatively you can @ to someone to tweet directly to them, or there is a private message option available, but you can only message people who follow you or allowmessaging. When it comes to hashtags, bear in mind that you are limited to characters so only use a few. For example, you might say, “These #Landscape photos were taken on a @Fujifilm_UK #XT100”. Notice that I used an @handle for Fujifilm. Tagging in brands is a great way to get your work noticed and they might even retweet it. Use the search bar at the top to find brands and other people you wish to follow.
A ‘tweet’ is a message, image or video posted on Twitter. Notice the Twitter logo is a bird and you’ll soon get it. On the home page you can type in the box that says ‘What’s happening’ or click the blue feather symbol in the top right, which will be displayed on all pages to bring up the ‘Compose a Tweet’ box. This is where you can type your tweet, similar to posting a status on Facebook. All tweets are limited to 140 characters, but you can also add images, videos, GIFs or polls to your tweets. You can also include a URL link, if you wish to share a blog post, link to your website or other site. URLs do take up characters in your tweet, but Twitter will automatically shorten URLs. Like Instagram@ handles and # hashtags are important to use to
Following and retweeting
Retweeting posts can help you and others out; for example, if your favourite photographer or a friend of yours posts some images that you really like, retweeting them helps that person gain more exposure to their work. The same goes if people retweet your posts, that way they will then reach a wider audience (the followers of the person who retweeted it).
to reply to the post; next is a symbol with two arrows and if you click this you will ‘retweet’ the post, which will mean it appears on your profile. Finally is the heart, click this to show that you like a post. When you retweet a post you have two options: one is to quote the post, which allows you to add your own text, the other simply reposts it to your profile as it is.
Like Instagram, you can follow people on Twitter and people can also follow you. Your home feed will show posts from those that you follow in a timeline order, but it will also show posts that your friends have retweeted or liked. To retweet basically means to repost. If you look at someone else’s post in your feed, you will see an arrow pointing to the right, click this
Followus on social media
@PhotonewsPN facebook.com/photonewsPN
@jemmadoddphoto jemmadoddphoto facebook.com/jemmadoddphotography
@willcheungtog willcheungphoto facebook.com/willcheungphoto
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