20 Rules Of Twitter – Don’t be a Twidiot

Let’s be honest, everyone gets annoyed with other users on Twitter. Some people say that Twitter has its own language so we have compiled a list of rules for Twitter. People need to understand the code of conduct for Twitter, so to help you to avoid being called one of the definitions below we have created some Twitter rules:

Twanker – An egocentric individual, celebrity or organization who uses Twitter only for one-way broadcasting about their own greatness.

Twidiot – An individual or organization that uses Twitter only to talk about insignificant things no one cares about, like what they had for breakfast or their latest press release.

The rules:

1) Do not tweet about what you are having for dinner

2) If you are tweeting for your clients remember to never get your personal and business accounts mixed up. This is something that can be easily done (might be worth not being logged into your personal account)

3) Never retweet a Follow Friday

4) Leave room for RTs – it’s worth noting how may characters you have in your username (for example my username ‘digitim’ has 7 characters). Now add 4 extra characters for ‘RT @’ and you’re left with 129 characters – leave around 20 characters for replies

5) Never do a Follow Friday (just our opinion)

6) Use hashtags when necessary, but do not overuse them

7) Don’t become obsessed with your Klout score

’8) Never say thanks for a Follow Friday

9) Stick to 140 characters, you can do longer tweets but no one wants to click on the link to read the rest of it

10) Choose an appropriate avatar (picture) – your thumbnail is the only bio information that comes through along with your username so make it worthwhile

11) Choose as short a username as possible – remember you only have 140 characters to play with

12) RT often and strategically – there are certain times in the day that are best to RT (see previous blog post for this)

13) Keep DM private – make sure you don’t reply to a direct message publicly, this can be easily done but is an amateur mistake

14) Don’t flood Twitter – I have unfollowed people before because they tweet too often – If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all

15) Keep your Twitter feed public! You might be hiding your tweets for a reason…

16) If you receive a complaint on Twitter, try to resolve it in an efficient and appropriate manner

17) Don’t tweet or do a Foursquare check in when you’re pulling a sickie

18) Grammar and typo errors reflect badly when you’re representing a brand and even yourself

19) If you’re a regular updater on Twitter, don’t link it to your Facebook as it may annoy your ‘real’ friends

20) Don’t try to pass off other people’s content off as yours

Key Take Away

Hope this helps you to understand the Twitter etiquette.

~Image sources: http://www.returnondigital.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/TwitterRules.jpg

~ Front cover image:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/electropod