Greetings readers.
Hope this post finds you in good spirits. I thought I’d take a moment to do a post about my favorite social media/networking site of all time, Twitter. November 21, 2010 will mark my fifth anniversary of tweeting, so I can safely say I am an early adopter and have seen the evolution of this micro-blogging site. I’m pretty much still subscribe to the original reasoning behind the creation of Twitter, though I’ve read more than enough times that some feel tweeting about the oatmeal you just ate is inane and boring. I beg to differ, in that it gives insight to one’s everyday activities (how’s that for “reality”?).
In any event, Twitter 2.0 (if you will) has evolved to be a major force in content and social branding. I simply love it for the info-push that I receive in various areas of technology, music production, and yes, those everyday so-called “boring” aspects of daily activities some tweet about. That being said are *my* ten tips for better tweeting.
1. Acknowledge new followers with a tweet of thanks.
2. Pay attention to the interests of your followers. If you come across information that they may be of interest to a follower, tweet it directly to that follower (or followers).
3. Follow Friday: If you’re going to suggest to your users why they should follow someone, give a reason why. A large list of IDs followed by #FF = #FAIL..
4. Retweeting someone else’s large list of #FF = #DOUBLE FAIL. Personally to see entire list of folks that I have no idea who they are is annoying. Call it a pet peeve, but hey….
5. Be courteous. Despite the origins of Twitter. It’s a social network.
6. Airing dirty laundry, twitter rage complete with expletives = #FAIL. (Yeah, yeah I know, unfollow the person – I do when it gets excessive).
7. Retweet info that you think would be beneficial to most, if not all, of your followers. If it’s just a few, try using list for that. I doubt all my followers would be interested in a retweet of how long a Shuttle EVA event lasted on an ISS mission.
8. Twitter is not a chat client (contrary to popular belief) . Though it can be done, I’ve found it difficult to carry on an ongoing conversation. The mechanism of Twitter is too dynamic (update-wise) to meaningfully keep track of one. Yahoo IM, Google Talk, AIM, MSN Messenger, BBM…you get the picture.
9. Relentless arguing on Twitter = #FAIL. You unnecessarily subject your entire list of followers to something they could possibly care less about. Doing it in real life is ridiculous enough.
10. When using URL shortners (bit.ly, etc), ensure that they point to the intended page before tweeting. Sometimes they dont always work properly.
That’s it. Have a great weekend. Oh, and if you like….retweet this (see 7). (wink)
peace,
F!
Yo Doug! Nice write up. I have to agree with most of these tips, and disagree (without malice) to the others. They ALL are still great guidelines to follow, and you can’t go wrong with following them to the T.
However, when you are a social butterfly like yourself and I, it would take ALL day to adhere to #1 & #3. I find, like you mentioned, that twitter is a firehose – you step in, get a drink, then step out; but the water keeps flowing. Unless you got some mad twitter skillz and know how to “explore” a timeline of an interesting “current” tweet, you can be thoroughly lost.
So, I try to, at least, clump my #FF peeps in groups, to kinda give SOME sense of a reason why: tech, FA, funny, etc.
I’ve personally given up on acknowledging my followers, mainly ’cause they tend to be spammy. But, the first thing I do is to hit their timeline to see what they have been tweeting. Fill-in-form replies are ignored. The “real” peeps, I usually will read their replies, and chime in on one of the interesting ones – a real sincere acknowledgement.
On the chat aspect, again, I disagree. I think the whole public nature of twitter makes this feature tremendously useful. I start a “thread” with some who may kinda know something, and then someone else who know it better jumps in, and boom – a mini IM situation. If I have to ask everyone about something I “think” they know about, i could be knocking on lots of wrong doors. Popping in to add “intelligently” is very appropiate – at least for me.
Continuing on # 8, I think having a good twitter client makes the WHOLE deal work or not. Being able to separate people into groups easily allow chats to happen. I use Tweetdeck on PC and PockeTwit on my Windows Mobile phone. Both use groups (although not transferable between the two). SOO easy to tweet on the computer, and bearible on phone. I can tweet up a storm to many people on the computer, but usually only one at a time on the phone.
Like I say, I disagree without malice, bruh. Peace!
Hi Dougie.:-) This post is SO on-point. You’ve addressed everything that I could think of regarding Twitter etiquette and mentioned two of my BIGGEST pet-peeves, #’s 4 & 7. Great post!;-)
Derek,
Great comments man, much appreciated. My motto is, it’s ok to agree to disagree. On #1, I was referring to real users, not spam. My updates stay locked, so I never really worry about spam, and when I get it, I cant usually tell and immediately delete.
On #7, what I am referring to is people I have encountered that have started a convo with me and for whatever reason, I have to step away from twitter. I come back an hour later, and they ask me if I saw their last reply to the previous convo and expect me to remember where we left off. Imagine how many updates to my timeline occurred in an hour. Some have gotten offended I didn’t remember. Hello?
As far as starting a thread and people popping in to comment, that’s different than a one on one chat. You can always use the @yourID feature to see who replied to you, but after hours or even days of being away, imagine how many @yourIDs you have to go through to find the last response…follow me?
Good twitter clients like Tweetdeck are useful, especially since it’s coming to more types of mobile phones.
Thanks for the comments!
Cool Madeline…glad you found them usefu!!