Now that you’ve created a Twitter username and personalized your account, it’s time to start building your timeline.

Building Your Timeline

In order to read other users’ tweets and have your own tweets read, you need to follow and gain followers. By searching for other users in the search bar, you will be able to click on a user’s Twitter page and “follow” them. This means that whatever this user tweets, you will be able to see it in your own timeline.

What is a timeline?

A timeline is where all of your tweets and retweets, along with all of your followers’ tweets and retweets, appear in a vertical manner. A tweet is the content you post from your Twitter account, and a retweet is when another follower chooses to share your post with his own followers [This will be discussed later]. You are able to scroll up or down in order to see these tweets and retweets. Take a look at this screenshot from my own timeline.

Additionally, when you visit your own profile page, all of your tweets and retweets will appear in a similar manner.

What or who should I follow on Twitter?

It really depends on your preferences. If this is a personal Twitter account, find friends to follow — maybe even family members, too. Many sports teams and celebrities have Twitter accounts, as well, if you’re looking to keep up to date with the latest sports or pop culture.

For companies and businesses, it is advisable to follow similar (or different) companies within your industry, or companies outside of the industry, such as media outlets near your location. The best way to stay up to date with the industry and others happenings in your location is to follow those who tweet about it!

Simply put: follow your interests! All you have to do is use Twitter’s search bar to find and follow those interests, whether it be news outlets, sports teams, friends and family or entertainment industries.

What if content shows up on my timeline from people I’m not following?

This could be a result of your followers’ retweets or sponsored tweets. As I mentioned, any content that your followers tweet themselves OR content they retweet will appear on your timeline. Some companies also pay for sponsored tweets to appear on your timeline, although these can be hidden by clicking a small “Dismiss” button at the bottom of the tweet.

Now that you’re familiar with your Twitter timeline, the next step is figuring out what to tweet and how to tweet it.