Remember how you first heard of Twitter? Did you have all sorts of ideas of what to expect? And when you read blog posts in which people referred to Twitter, did your expectations take on more detail?

Mine didn’t.

I first heard about Twitter from a Social Media expert. I’d joined StumbleUpon at his direction. That’s a social bookmarking site. And I’d had a fun time learning how that works. He suggested Digg too, but I’ve taken a pass on that one—for now.

Twitter is a great way to network he told me. I researched it a little more online, and checked out a few people’s profiles once I learned how. I watched the Twitter intro video at the site and it was still rather nebulous. Did people actually stop while mowing the lawn to tweet that they were doing it? Hmmmm.

Deciding When to Join

Then the social media guru said the magic words, “You really have to jump in and do it to learn it.” So I decided to join, with a few prerequisites:

• An internet-ready cell phone with a full qwerty keyboard
• Have three people to follow, including the man I was learning from
• Determine how I wanted to present myself to the Twitter world (name, site, etc.)
• Figure out what in the world to tweet

What I Figured Out Quickly

It’s been a little over six months and I’ve picked up a few things. Like, now I know people tweet about mowing the lawn before they actually start. Some of my early ideas were validated. Some things I learned the hard way.

1. Text messaging is best left off. You can’t really turn off Twitter if you still have notifications coming through text messages. And, if you’re like me and don’t have or want unlimited text messaging, keep your device notifications off.
2. Twittering from you cell phone demands a client application. Having a client application eliminates the need for text messaging. If you really need to know whenever any of your friends tweet, then this may not hold true for you.
3. Auto-following doesn’t really save time. There’s no need to follow every single person that follows you. Being selective can save time by sparing you tweets of no or negative value to you, and the subsequent need to unfollow. This leads into the next point.
4. I don’t follow people who offer things that I find offensive. One example: I will automatically skip the girls who want to pedal their suggestive photos. Duh!
5. Think of unfollowing as self-preservation. I unfollowed a guy who had a set twenty tweets (it looked like less than twenty really) that he cycled through including the one for his break. He shared only about his site, asked one question (the same question each cycle), and the set played for the four days I followed him. Definitely not my cup of tea.
6. Use http://search.twitter.com to find what interests you. Search for your subjects of interest and explore the profiles of people writing to them. It’s a good option in addition to exploring your friends’ followers.
7. I read about how to get the best from Twitter. Great resources are available on the web to give you insight into good ways to interact on Twitter, whether you want to know about twitter etiquette or running Twitter applications.
8. What to say gets easier to decide. There’s no hard fast rule, no matter what people say. I love weather tweets because it gives me further insight into the tweeter’s life on a particular day, even at a particular time. Some people say that’s on their list of things to definitely not tweet.

Eve though there’s lots you can read about it, as my friend said, the best way to learn Twitter it is to jump in and do it. You’ll see first hand what works for you.

Did your first days using Twitter work the way you expected? Did you discover anything that surprised you? I’d love to hear about your experiences.