Twitter 101 Chapter 3 8 Things to Avoid on Twitter

When you’re trying to decide what type of content to tweet it helps to know some Twitter etiquette. While you won’t find a list of rules on Twitter, there are still well established guidelines for etiquette. Daren Barefoot, in his book Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Handbook, offers some good practical tips of things to avoid on Twitter. I found them very helpful so I’m going to rehash some of them for you. If you are looking for more reading on social media marketing, Daren Barefoot’s book is an excellent practical overview.

1.      Automated responses to new followers

Even if it sounds like a good idea to greet each of your new followers with an automated messaged, trust us, it’s not. In the end these messages are simply annoying. They usually say something to the effect of ‘Welcome! Please visit our website!’ These types of messages come across as impersonal and often try to sell something which results in annoying the user.

2.      Reposting Everything

Do not repost all of your Facebook status updates as Tweets or vice versa. It appears disingenuous to copy paste material from one social media outlet to another. If someone follows you on Twitter, it is likely that they are also your friend on Facebook, and no one likes to read the same material twice. Obviously there will be some overlap in the material you post on Facebook and Twitter but make sure that it is at least worded differently. You should also make sure to post some things on Twitter that you don’t post on Facebook and post some things on Facebook you don’t post on Twitter.

3.      I have A.D.D It stands for Attention Deficit …oh look, a butterfly!

Make sure to stay on topic in your Twitter posts. Talk about your company or your industry or things related to your company. If someone is following you on Twitter it means they are interested in your company or industry, so talk about that. Your followers on Twitter probably don’t care about what you thought of the new X-Men movie. It can be effective talk about mundane or humorous things on Twitter but it is also risky and usually done best when it comes from somewhere other than your official Twitter page. We’ll talk in detail about how to use that tactic in a different blog post.

4.      Conduct private conversations in public.

Never talk about something that doesn’t concern at least a majority of your followers. If you and a co-worker need to talk about something don’t use the company Twitter account, that’s what private messages, email and chat are for.

5.      Not giving context

Make sure people know what you are posting. Context is important. Posts like “Thanks @twitteruser” or “Check this out someurl” do not tell your followers what’s going on or why you’re posting. If you want to publicly thank someone that’s fine, but say why and for what. If you want to post a link, great, but give a brief description of what they will find at the link.

6.      Spamming trending keywords

Spamming key words is a technique to make your Twitter posts appear in searches but is also dishonest and will anger all of your followers, so don’t do it. Spamming keywords is when someone inserts random keywords into a post that is unrelated. For example someone could post “Japan Earthquake Come check out our great deals on appliances!” The earthquake in Japan clearly has nothing to do with appliances, but someone could tweet this so that their tweet shows up when someone searches Japan Earthquake. This tactic will anger everyone on Twitter, so don’t even think about it.

7.      Tweet too much

While tweeting is great you don’t want too much of a good thing. No one wants to read something from the same person every 5 minutes. Twitter has a 140 character limit on tweets for a reason: Twitter should be quick, snappy, and simple. Don’t try and give out lots of information over Twitter. Instead point users to where they can find the information. Links are good. If you find you just have way too much information for 140 characters, go to your corporate blog and type away!

8.      Ignore @replies

On Twitter if someone uses a @ sign they are referring to something specific. If someone uses @yourcompanyname, they are pointing everyone to your company. When you see these types of tweets do not ignore them! Treat them like you would treat an email or a call to your customer service department. On Twitter you can search your company name and it will give you every recent instance that someone has used it in a Tweet. After you have searched your company name you can subscribe to a feed that will tell you whenever someone uses your name. Make sure you do this in order to know what people on Twitter are saying about you.

Hopefully these tips on what to avoid are helpful and in the future we’ll give you some tips on what you should tweet as well.