Vinny's Rules For Twitter
The other day I was on a well known social media experts blog and he had a set of rules for using Twitter. I was amazed at some of them to say the least. Instead of leaving a comment on his blog I decided to write a post instead. Why give him the traffic he already has enough anyway.
I am not claiming to be a “Twitter Expert” and these rules should be taken with a grain of salt. They are just some things that I have learned and some rules are not set in stone. It is just some of the rules I try to follow.
1 – Be yourself – Trying to be something or someone that you are not will not help you or your followers. Upload a nice picture of yourself. No one I know does business with an avatar.
2 – Be Helpful – People need help so do your best to help them if you can. It will come back to help you in the long run. Spreading good stuff builds good karma.
3 – Be Engagable – If you are following too many people that you can't answer a tweet because you didn't see it then I feel you are missing the whole point of this. Sure you can use list and such to help but if your twitterstream is too crowded you could be missing important tweets from some good people. The so called expert that inspired this post follows the population of Billings Montana which is over 100,000. I read 99% of the tweets of the people I follow, and respond to them.
4 – Don't be spammy – Pretty easy one, if you have to ask yourself if the tweet is spammy in any way before you send it it probably is. This includes those sponsored ones. Putting #ad doesn't make it acceptable it just tells me its spam. You can promote your own services as long as it is helpful to others.
5 – Limit your retweets – Not everyone has the same interest as you. Pretty hard to believe huh. I limit myself to one or two retweets a day. I usually retweet something useful or a cell phone tip since I am hooked on my Droid. Sometimes I retweet something because I know it aggravates Shawn Collins when I do it to all my followers. If you can use the manual method @rt your followers will appreciate it.
6 – Be Respectable – It is OK to tweet out a link about your latest blog post just don't drop the link 50 times during the course of the day. This will get you on to my never follow list very quickly.
7 – Never Retweet a Guru – Everytime I see this on my twitterstream the first thing that pops in my mind is that the person can't think on their own, they have nothing knowledgeable to share. They don't realize the so called gurus only reason for placing the tweet was knowing some people will retweet it. If you need to follow all the so called Gurus odds are I don't need to follow you.
8 – Don't Be Perfect – No one I know is perfect and guess what neither are you. Admit when you do something that is stupid or not really with the times. It makes you believable and someone I want to follow. I don't care if you are attending your 100th Poison concert, we all have bad taste in something we do. I would rather hear about a C.C. Seville solo then hearing about how great you are all the time. If 90% of your tweets start with “I” you are doing it wrong.
9 – Help Your Friends – If someone is doing something good for someone or doing something for charity help them out by tweeting about it or doing a retweet. There are many less fortunate people and animals on this planet. Retweeting about a charity never hurt no one.
10 – Be Entertaining – No one likes boring. Have some fun, it shows people that you are real. Be the life of the party as long as the theme of the party isn't about how great you are.
11 – Don't Automate Your Location – Most people don't care where you are every hour of the day. I know I don't care if you are on a highway or stuck in traffic somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. I have been there and done that. It wasn't fun then and it certainly isn't fun reliving that moment again. Every once in a while is OK just don't do it all day long.
Well I guess that is enough for now. Would love to hear some of your rules concerning Twitter.
Crap Vinny… I had my Social Media Manifesto 80% done, and you come out with this! We’re on similar brainwaves – scary thought.
Everyone uses Twitter differently. If you like how someone Tweets, follow them – if not, unfollow. It’s that simple.
Notice your post title is, “MY Rules for Twitter”, not “THE Rules for Twitter”. There are no rules for everyone, but there are rules that you may keep yourself.
Good post
Eric
Thanks Eric
I agree there no set rules and to each their own. Like you said this is my rules, actually there are probably 100 more lol. Feel free to use any of these in your manifesto. 🙂
Most of them are pretty good, but there are a few of them I have different opinions on.
Gotta disagree with the comments about an avatar in #1.
First, I’ll let you know that yes, you DO know someone who “does business with an avatar,” namely me. And, I’m glad I do. I would have missed out on a great linkbuilding guy if I was hung up on seeing his real pic!
On to #8…I think people should be careful with this. Admitting a *few* errors is one thing, but if I see that too much, I lose confidence in the person. That’s not to say I think people should outright brag or blatantly self-promote, but like a performance, there shouldn’t be too many out-takes.
#9. A few charity RTs are fine, but if someone does it all the time, it becomes spam. Some people seem to RT every charity appeal they run into, and that does get old. Especially if the charities have a political bias!
#4…Yeah, that’s what the “other” account is for, heheheh.
Leader
#4 lol I get that totally
#9 Yeah I could have explained it more, retweeting like someone on the ebay giving boards is way too much.
#8 I just said a few flaws 🙂 you know like using an avatar lol
C.C. Deville’s solo at the Poison concert I went to in 1988 was awesome.
Okay, granted, I don’t remember it specifically, but I was there, and I’m sure it was fantastic 😀 I didn’t see ’em 100 times, just twice 😉
Haha I like it!
Most of these points you slowly learn, the geolocation feature i used for a bit on my BB but realised that i was really sharing more that i needed to so selectively use it now.
The idea about not RT experts is a smart tip as if mashable sends something out most people will tweet it hundreds of times, unless you send it to someone on your network via a @person or delay the RT till later in the week when those who might not be in your time zone or on twitter that day might find it relevant.
David I am glad you found my little space in the world. It was nice talking to you last month at IMNY.
These rules are not set in stone, but then again I have been known to be a rule breaker myself 🙂