Is there such a thing as twitt-equette?
Fans of twitter will know that there are certain things that shouldn’t be ‘tweeted’. Not necessarily because they are in bad-taste per-say, but because twitter does, or at least should have it’s own social etiquette. After pondering this idea around for a few days, I got to thinking as to what that would entail.
In the spirit of ‘the social web’ please leave your comments on what you believe to be, or should be, a rule of ‘twittequette’. I’ll give it a week or two and put a ’suggested’ list together. Here are a few of my ideas:
- Tweet often but not too often. Yes, if you’re on my tweet list I’m interested in you and in what you’re doing. I’m less interested however, in getting a live feed of your lunchtime activity every few minutes, about how much of your sandwich you’ve eaten.
- Found something interesting posted by one of the people you’re following? If you want to re-tweet that link then it’s common courtesy to tell people who you heard it from. If your followers find it interesting they may very well find the original poster interesting too.
- Keep text slang to a minimum if your tweets are aimed at people who are not well versed. ‘R u’, ‘u r’ etc are generally o.k as they are commonly accepted short-hand and read phonetically. Not everyone understands ROTFLMAO and LQTM however.
- Follow people you know, respect or find interesting. Don’t follow anyone with the intent to sell them something, spam or hassle them. You’ll look stupid, you’ll be blocked and people will go out of their way to make sure their friends know to block you too. It’s a social network for gods sake.
- Keep a lid on promotional tweets and mix them up with different stuff too. If all you use twitter for is to bring traffic to your site or promote a product people will get bored of you. Be personable, friendly and interesting. People respond to people in this environment, not corporations and sales-reps.
Remember this is all opinion, feel free to discuss, debate and contribute if you feel the need.
Here’s hoping for some interesting results.