Should You Twitter About Your Bicycle Tour?

June 15, 2008 by Darren Alff

One of the biggest questions I get about bicycle touring is, “How do you keep in touch with your friends, family members, and co-workers while you are out on your bike?”

One way to stay in touch and keep people informed about your happenings out on the road is to use a new service called Twitter.

The service itself is a bit difficult to explain, so a video has been created for you.

How To Get Started:

First of all, you need to go to Twitter.com and sign up for an account. (It’s a free service, so you should at least give it a try for a while and see if it grows on you.)

Once you’ve set up your account, invite your friends and family members to follow you. They’ll need to sign up for a Twitter account as well (if they haven’t already done so).

Once you’ve signed up and invited your friends, you’re ready to begin! All you have to do now is start posting.

Remember that Twitter posts have to be 140 characters or less, so your message needs to be brief.

But What Should You Twitter About?

The way I use Twitter is to let my followers know what I am doing. Of course, I don’t post about every little thing that I’m doing. Instead, I typically post about new content on my website or exiting and crazy things that happen to me while I’m out on my bike.

Just take a look at some of my Twitters from the past few days:

I’m collecting bicycle touring postcards: http://tinyurl.com/6glvgq Will you be a part of the adventure?

In the middle of a snow/thunder/lightening storm! Totally awesome!

Watching “30 DAYS” http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/30days/ This week is about people with spinal cord injuries. Very interesting!

Just posted my interview with Shawn Wright about his plans for biking across Canada: http://tinyurl.com/6d3ym7 Interview is 10:54 mins

Large animal 50 feet away on hike. It seems to be grunting at me!

I just got a nice email from a user on Facebook from the East Coast who is about to take off on a bicycle tour. Very cool!

There are a number of different ways to use this service while traveling on your bike. The best way to figure it out is to sign up for an account, start your own Twitter feed, and start following some more established Twitter users. After a while you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t. You’ll begin to develope a system that makes you and your followers happy… and the whole process will become quite addicting!

If you’d like to follow me on Twitter (or see my most recent Twitter posts), go to: http://twitter.com/bicycletouring