Tips & etiquette for Twitter bliss
Newbies, seasoned tweeters and gurus rejoice! Search for Twitter mistakes on Google and you will get nothing but the same old dross about ‘having a profile pic’ and ‘don’t auto-follow’ etc, in your results. Dull, dull, dull. It’s all been done and said before. So without further ado, I bring you 10 completely new Twitter mistakes, observations and tips to creating value for your followers, avoiding common pitfalls and more.
Enjoy!
1. DMs
People who begin using Twitter, gravitate towards DMs as it feels like email. Safe private conversations. People need reminding not to bring the short falls of email to Twitter, conversations should be public where possible and only private if absolutely necessary.
2. RTs without reading
An easy trap to fall into if you don’t have enough time to read an article. You may begin retweeting based on the strength of a title alone. But that title may be misleading and not what the article is about, so always check first. Sending around flippant retweets, is the equivalent of spam emails or unsolicited mail through the door.
3. Hidden Messages
Any tweet which is sent to many, but with a message intended for one. A cowards way of bringing a tricky topic to light with one individual that you should be talking to directly. Messages like these tend to leave everyone else scratching their heads and maybe even the intended recipient uncertain of the importance of the message because it’s been sent to everyone.
4. Chat
We’ve all got caught up in multiple tweets in a public stream, but for the majority of overseers, it will be annoying ‘email-tennis’ filling up their Twitter stream and will have them hovering their fingers over the ‘unfollow’ button. Whilst it can be tempting and fun to message one person continually through Twitter, check yourself and consider whether your audience is enjoying it as much as you are. If not. Phone? Email? Or indeed, move the conversation over to a real chat client like Skype or MSN Messenger.
5. Trending Topics
Talking about topics because they are trending. Sure there’s some good causes and great charity based trends which develop. But otherwise, where is the value in talking about something that everyone else is talking about unless you can contribute something new? You will just end up becoming a voice in the crowd. Stay away from trending topics if you’re trying to make an impact. And definitely stay away from talking about them, just because everyone else is.
6. Apologies
You have just published that perfect 140 character tweet and then realised you’ve spelt something wrong. What should you do? Delete the tweet? Re-publish with the correct spelling? Or apologise? Unless the miss-spelling changes the context of the tweet, leave it. People will gloss over the slip and still understand the message. We’re human, we make mistakes, and your intelligence on Twitter will be acknowledged over time, not in the space of one tweet.
7. Generic Hellos / Goodbyes
Bringing small talk to Twitter such as hellos and goodbyes are completely unnecessary and valueless to the majority of followers. Who cares that you’ve just got up? Or you’re just going to bed? Where is the value in telling people this? Why is it important to you that people know this? This space isn’t ‘Chat’ remember? Imagine if you said hello to the twitter-verse and 4000 followers said hello back. Or worse, imagine saying goodbye, then logging off and logging back on the next morning to find 4000 replies from people saying goodbye from the night before, and then you say hello to them all again? How useless would your Twitter stream suddenly become? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
8. Connecting Accounts
Lots of websites allow you to channel your updates through Twitter, however this should be used wisely. Ask yourself ‘what value does this give my followers?’ first, if your only answer strokes your ego, forget it. A pet peeve of mine is people that pump their music playlist through Twitter—every 3-4 mins I get another message about their music track. Very annoying, and if you or that person doesn’t tweet frequently the stream will become full of music tracks. This is probably fine if you’re Pete Tong, but not if you’re anyone else. Are your LinkedIn or FaceBook updates suitable for your Twitter community? If not, un-tick the box that posts to directly to Twitter, or better still, disconnect them entirely.
9. Generic Notifications
Also related to the above, any generic message pushed out to your followers that ‘I’ve just uploaded a YouTube video’ or ‘I’ve just updated my profile bio, check it out’ only tells me that one thing. What I want to hear is ‘what’ has been created and ‘why’ should I go and view it? Stay away from generic automated messages, customise them to add in personal context. The majority of generic messages, will be ignored by everyone with the exception of your best mates and biggest fans.
10. Public DMs
A big no-no and one that you may do whilst getting used to the service. You discover you can’t send a private DM, as the other person isn’t following you, so you send a public reply instead. Ouch. Again a message that has no relevance to anyone else other than the recipient, so all it will do is create some form of public embarrassment, damage a friendship, and bloat the twitter stream of your followers.
If you’ve finished reading these points and don’t have a bead of sweat on your forehead, congratulations, you’ve probably been there and done that, and realised the error of your ways. If you’ve cringed your way through this list, then maybe you should reassess your Tweets, search for words of more value and follow my golden rule: ‘If in doubt, don’t’.
Right, there’s my list. Do you agree or disagree? Or do you have more to add? Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear what you think.
image credit: gorillasushi.com
