This is part 2 in a series on Marketing on Twitter. In this article I'll explain how to get started on Twitter.

The first step of a journey is often the most difficult. So let's get started. Go to Twitter.com, pick your user name, and create your account. On your Twitter home page (www.twitter.com/YourUserID), type a term in the search box and click on the search icon. Don't bother posting any messages (also called updates or tweets) yet. What you'll see are snippets of separate conversations from Twitter users.

At this point you can click on a Twitterer's user name or icon to visit their home page and see their latest updates. When you find a user whose tweets are interesting, go to their home page and click on the Follow button at the top of the page. Following a member allows their posts to appear on your home page. It also lets them send you direct messages via the Twitter messaging system.

You can use the Find People link at the top of Twitter pages to find interesting people to follow. Many businesses are also using Twitter. For example, typing in the words "Palo Alto" (my hometown) in Twitter's Find People search brings up links from Palo Alto Westin Hotel to Palo Alto Daily News. They're all using Twitter!

Although you can read other members' tweets by following them or using Search, at this point you still can't communicate directly with other Twitterers. As mentioned in Part 1, you can only contact members who follow you. In the next part of this series, we'll look at one of the most important Twitter topics: how to grow your follower list.

Note: Twitter Search can find members physically near you. Try using the following format:

near:"your town" within:5mi