10 tips to help you start your twitter account


I will be the first to admit it, twitter is not as easy as it looks. If you look at it on the surface it can be hard to find your particular part of it all. Unlike Facebook where new friends, pages and groups are constantly suggested, twitter can sometimes be a one man island. Yes twitter has the “who to follow” feature but these are usually celebrities who are unlikely to follow you back at first. Without the right strategies Twitter can be a very lonely place.

The second reason many of us struggle with Twitter if the feeling that we need to be tweeting at least 3-4 times a day. Something that is uncommon on other social media platforms. Whether we admit to it or not this can be a bit overwhelming. There is nobody out there saying we actually need to do this but at the same time it’s not too hard. A tweet has a limit of 140 characters, many of us would text that before leaving the house in the morning.

What I often hear is “How can I tweet every day, when I have nothing to tweet about?” This is one of the most common reasons for people soon losing interest in twitter. Yes this is a problem. Not having anything to tweet about is the social media equivalent to being on a debate team of a language you don’t understand. Like a debate, social media and the web as a whole is all about trading ideas. So here are 10 ways you can be inspired to tweet more and getting your twitter life up and running.

Step 1: Follow your friends, family and co-workers
As mentioned above Twitter can be a lonely place, without friends, family and work mates. So why not change that? Ask people on other social media platforms to follow you. Ask your friends when you meet them in person. Ask the postman, it doesn't really matter. The idea is to follow people you are interested in and in return are interested in you. A common short cut to finding people you know on twitter can be done on the site itself. All it takes is one account to get you started. This technique is to go into your friends account and see who they are following. They are more than likely following people you also know. Now that you have found them, follow them and suddenly watch your network grow. A piece of advice would be to change your profile picture to a picture of yourself just so people know it’s you.

Step 2: Follow celebrities you are interested in
Now that you have found every Tom, Dick, and Harry from your own circle, it’s now time to go further and take things to the global stage. If you are a buddingentrepreneur you can follow Richard Branson
 (@richardbranson). Sports fans can follow maybe famous sport stars such as WayneRooney (@WayneRooney) and LeBron James (@KingJames). Not to mention hundreds of music stars and actors. If all that stardust was not enough for you why not take a trip into space with NASA (@NASA). There is something for everybody in the world of twitter and all this can be done by just typing a name into the search bar.


Step 3: Get news instantly
Social media is often seen as a time consumer, but when it comes to news and current affairs Twitter will give you a chance to get news instantly. First we had word of mouth, then newspapers. Next it was websites and now social media. By following newspapers such as The Guardian (@Guardian) and news stations such as the BBC (@BBCBreaking) information will be tweeted in your home page. You don’t even need to go to the effort of looking at the website anymore. You can simple click on the link of any tweet that peaks your interest.

Step 4: Figure out what your niche is
You have followed everybody and everything, you have an interest in. With that you are now getting bulldozed with a lot of great content. At this stage you may not have realised what your niche is, in other words where your interests lie. Have a look at the tweets coming into your home page.
What themes and topics are popping up most often? When you figure this out you are ready to join the conversationand get tweeting.
Step 5: Have your own voice
There are thousands if not millions of interesting people on Twitter. All of them are trading ideas and opinions. It is now time to get involved yourself. You can start by Re-tweeting others but in the long run it is better to tweet yourself every now and then. Find an interesting article? Tweet it. See a funny picture? Tweet it. You get the idea. There will always be room for a personal element to a social media account, but be careful what information you share about yourself. It is advised not
to tweet out your address, phone number or travel plans. It would be best to hold back posting those pictures until you get home from the week in Italy.

Step 6: Get involved with hashtags
A hashtag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that share a common topic. A fun fact is that they are not case sensitive. Hashtags have three main purposes. First of all they can be used as an alternative way of telling people what you are talking about. For example instead of tweeting “I really enjoyed the Kodaline concert. You can tweet “I really enjoyed the concert last night. #Kodaline” By using the hashtag, your tweet will be visible to anybody who searches “Kodaline” on twitter even if they do not follow you. Thirdly a hashtag (#) gives you the opportunity to join the conversations of trending topics anywhere in the world. Again this opens your account up to people who do not follow you.


Step 7 : Use your mobile
According to the Wall Street Journal Twitter account, 86% of Twitter uses use the site via mobile devices. Twitter mobile is very easy to use as tweets are no more than 140 characters. Even the smallest of screens will not become overwhelmed and overcrowded by content. You can also read all of your personal/direct messages without leaving the app. A criticism of social media rival Facebook.


Step 9: Add more colour
It’s not a must but after a while a bland lookingprofile can get a bit boring for both you and your
followers. Twitter gives you an option of changingyour cover photo (the photo behind your profile
picture) as well as changing the theme colour. You can take this further but even these few steps can
jazz up a profile in a very positive manner.


Step 10: Enjoy
Twitter is all about being social, and usually something social is a lot of fun. So go out and tweet till your hearts content, make a few friends and just enjoy everything one of the world’s most popular websites has to offer.

Written by Diarmuid Gillingham

Is Wayne Rooney holding Manchester United and himself back as captain?

There are many ways to introduce yourself to the footballing world but little will top what a 16 year old Wayne Rooney did. That curling venomous shot into the back of the Arsenal net ending their 30 game unbeaten run will take some beating. The quality of the goal suggested that football fans would “remember the name” and so it has proved. The Liverpool born striker has gone on to captain both club and country, win the champions league and looks set to become Manchester United and England’s leading goal scorer. Despite all this it can be argued that Rooney’s days as captain of Manchester United or even his days at Old Tarfford altogether could be numbered.

After the European championships in 2004 Rooney was the subject of praise from many corners, including his own England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson who said 'I don't remember anyone making such an impact since Pele in the 1958 World Cup ... Rooney's absolutely fantastic, not only at scoring goals but he plays football - he's a complete footballer' High praise indeed. It was the most intoxicating time to be an England fan since Euro 1996.  A player with a natural swagger and power terrorising some of Europe’s best defenders. A swagger that has gradually diminished year by year as he has adapted his game in order to accommodate those around him. The question is has the “White Pele” fulfilled his massive potential which would put him at the very elite of the beautiful game? Does he belong in the same argument as players such as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo? Manchester United fans see their club as the biggest in the world so they may find the reality of the situation may be difficult to take. The reality is that the club captain go longer belongs in the argument of who is the best player in the world? Many would argue he is not even in the top ten strikers.

In the season that has just passed Rooney like club has had an underwhelming time. Like club, the season was not one of vintage football for the England skipper. Instead the club achieved qualification to the Champions League simple because the challenge from below was the equivalent of a meal you would refuse to pay for at a restaurant. In a season where 16 of Rooney’s first 26 appearances came in a variety of deeper roles it is clear Louis Van Gaal does not see Rooney as the striker to lead Manchester United to former glories. It is possible that Paul Scholes was correct when he said last year that Rooney’s peak “could have been when he was 26.” In that season he scored 35 goals, by far the best return for a single season in his career. Compare that to former teammate Ronaldo who has averaged around the 50 goal mark since leaving Manchester for the Spanish capital.

 It is not a new situation since the arrival of Louis Van Gaal that Rooney would play a deeper role, in fact Sir Alex Ferguson often played the often controversial striker out of position in order to accommodate the other attacking talent at the club. In the latter moments of Ronaldo’s career at Manchester United in was Ronaldo who played centrally despite arriving to Old Trafford as a winger while Rooney was often left on the wing scampering after onrushing full backs. It can be argued that was due to Ronado being the best player of his generation. The frustrating thing for the Englishman is that it has happened twice since. So often was Rooney dropped into the number 10 role or the wing to accommodate strikers such as the forever classy Dimitar Berbatov and one of the clubs greatest ever finishers in Robin Van Persie. It his perhaps only David Moyes who ever built the team around the former Everton man, a  season that was easily the clubs worst since the formation of the Premier League.

With that, we reach a place where you wonder, is Wayne Rooney an automatic starter at club level and with that comes the question should he be captain? The club may find itself in a place like they had with Gary Neville where the captain does not start every week but when he does he wears the armband. A situation that seems unlikely after quotes from the manager Louis Van Gaal earlier this season, in which he said that making Rooney captain made him near impossible to drop. This along with Rooney signing a contract extension last season that will keep him at the club until 2019, manager and club alike have backed themselves into a corner for a player who did not put in a single performance of note in the last three too four months of the season. A fact only put into the spotlight further by the encouraging performance of Robin Van Persie against West Brom last May.

The next two questions are quite damming on the English man. First of all does he deserve to be captain in the first place and secondly was he only made captain out of lack of choice? Real Madrid’s pursuit has being one of football’s worst kept secrets and with that has come the inevitable departure of club captain Iker Casillas. To make sure they got their way the serial cup winner has being booed by many corners of the Santiago Bernabeu crowd. This has caused uproar amongst many Manchester United fans. As they support a club’s whose history is based on loyal servants such as Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville. This is all well and good but surly if United fans have such a problem with how a loyal player like Casillas is being treated by the fans, how can these same fans accept a captain who has tried to leave the club twice. Worse again trying to force a move from your current club for your neighbours Manchester City, arguable Manchester United’s biggest rivals. Respect is a two way thing. Fans to players and players to fans. From a historic and moral ground the evidence would suggest that Rooney is an undeserving captain. So why is he the captain of the England’s richest club?

The answer is straight forward for many.  There was simply no other viable option at the time. It’s like going on holiday to a place you don’t want to go because you know if you don’t you won’t get to go anywhere else for the summer. If you looked at it now Chris Smalling may feel he would have being is in with a shout, but at the time the former Fulham and Maidstone man has on a tightrope with many fans. Robin Van Persie was the early favourite for the role after captaining Louis Van Gaal’s Holland side to the last four of the world cup. Unfortunately for him after a long summer and lack of preseason the Dutchman had little chance to show his influence in the changing room. This finally leaves Michael Carrick. A player who has gone about his job at Manchester United with little fuss on or off the pitch. But at the age of 33 it would be unrealistic to expect the former Tottenham to play every week. Again I come back to that quote, Louis Van Gaal wants his captain to always be in the side. So with all that in mind there was little choice.

If club and fans alike are okay with the morals grounds of Rooney staying as captain maybe they should look at the practical side. Has Rooney fulfilled his media commitments to a high standard? YES.  Has he had drama in the public eye? Only a little. Where the biggest problem comes is on the pitch. Rooney was often criticised as a striker for coming too deep to often and now he has a similar problem. When watching games it feels like Rooney spends more time getting in the ear of both his teammates and the referee than getting in the box and scoring goals.  The concept can baffle me at times, but sometimes you can do a job too well but this is one example. It is like Rooney is so concerned with his role as captain that he ignores his own role as the striker on the pitch. Like a hard working mother doing such a good job looking after her children that she forgets to care for her own health and social life. With this added responsibility Rooney’s game has lacked passion conviction and purpose.

Will Wayne Rooney’s goals  be able to lead Manchester United to their 4^th European Cup? His goal return of 14 would suggest not. Messi had 58 for Barcelona. Ronaldo scored 61 for Real Madrid. Lewandowski had 25 and Tevez had 29 for Bayern Munich and Juventus respectively. Will such a poor goal return and the player looking impossible droppable where will the club turn? Will the Liverpool born striker produce another 35 goal season. If he dosen’t it could be many years before the club has any hopes of catching clubs such as Liverpool, Barcelona and Real in terms of how many European cups they win.

Stripping Rooney of the captaincy would cause uproar on and off the pitch. So hat is the solution. I never thought I would say this but maybe the club should copy the Real Madrid model to reduce the pressure on Rooney. There was a point in 2010 where the La Liga runners up had four captains at once, they were Iker Casillas, Guti, Rual and current Manchester United target Sergio Ramos. Could sharing the role between Wayne Rooney, Chris Smalling, Michael Carrick and Robin Van Persie for example be the solution? It is not a hypothesis that has being tested often but maybe just maybe a solution to a problem that will only become more evident as time goes on. 

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