Tweeting 101 with Hair's Andrew Kober

Broadway performers spend a lot of time singing, acting, dancing and rehearsing, but they also have a lot of downtime. How do they spend it? One word: hobbies. Theater folks put the same amount of passion into their offstage pastimes as they do when the spotlight is on them. Broadway.com wants to harness all of that talent in our new feature called "Show Me." Not only will we get a chance to be nosy about the non-acting part of their lives, we are also getting tips on how to take up these hobbies ourselves. It’s like a master class from our favorite Broadway peeps. First up: Adorable Hair tribe member Andrew Kober, who gives us the 411 on all things Twitter and a lesson in tweeting. (Follow him: @andrewkober and @HAIRTribe on Twitter… and don’t forget to follow @Broadwaycom!) Photos by Jenny Anderson for Broadway.com


WHY TWITTER?
"Twitter is a quick and easy way to share information with the world in little tiny bursts of information—140 characters or less. I like it because it allows me to share what I’m up to with anyone who might be interested, and it allows me to get information from sources other than just websites. It’s like your own personal news page."


STEP ONE: SIGN UP
"To get started, go to Twitter.com. It’s quick and easy to make a profile. It’s best to pick a username that’s going to be easy for people to find you. When I first started, I had a complicated user name and people couldn’t find me, so I just changed it to andrewkober. Add a photo… and that’s really all you need to do. That’s it. Now go ahead and say, 'Hello, world.'"


STEP TWO: FOLLOW, FOLLOW
"To get your personal news stream going you have to follow people. See? I just clicked the 'Follow’ button, and now I’m following Broadway.com. When Broadway.com posts something, it will show up on my page. You can do it on your phone, you can do it via text, you can do it on the Internet; it’s versatile. And the more people you follow, the more information you’ll get. There are a lot organizations on Twitter, too: CNN Breaking News, MSNBC, Broadway.com. Look around for what interests you."


STEP THREE: EXPRESS YOURSELF
“What to write? That’s the question. I think the rule of thumb that I try to keep in mind is that unless you are Ashton Kutcher, nobody really cares what you had for breakfast. Share interesting articles, cool pictures, stories from your day. The point of Twitter is to throw out little tiny bits of information into the universe. if you have deep complicated thoughts about something, then I think that’s fantastic and I think you should indulge your deep complicated thoughts, but Twitter’s not the forum for it.”


STEP FOUR: JUMP IN
"Have fun, don’t be scared. Words like ‘tweet’ and ‘Twitter’ can sound scary—it all sounds like a Disney World ride gone wrong, but the truth is that Twitter is fun. It can be a really great way to find information that you otherwise might not have found. It’s a great way to kind of take the temperature of your social circle and the larger universe. You can’t do it wrong.”