The obvious course of action with Twitter users is to tweet till the cows come home without considering how their excessive tweeting is akin to spamming. Even worse, if you do this for a business account, then this will not endear your products to your followers. So, here are some basic rules to follow when you tweet.
1. Stick to 140 characters : Yeah, I know, it’s difficult to craft a concise message. Even more so, when you’re plugging a product. But, the message that you send can be more powerful and impressive if you think it through. Anything bigger than 140 deserves to go on your company blog. Also, never split a single comment across multiple tweets as 140 characters is more than enough. Otherwise, your tweet is way too long.
2. Stick to 140 characters while Retweeting : You like someone’s tweet; it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling and you’d like to retweet (share) the same. Don’t forget that a prefix will have to be added (RT @username) which shortens the original message. Edit it so it fits the character limit while retaining the original message as much as possible.
3. Don’t follow everyone : When Twitter was launched, typically, you followed anyone who followed you. It was the courteous thing to do. Today, with Twitter growing in size and with 40% of all messages being pointless babble (see statistics below), you don’t have to follow anyone who follows you. But, do your due diligence. check out the follower’s profile before you make a decision. Remember you can follow all and sundry on your personal account. But, if you’re a business or you’re providing a service, stick to the big players of people with voices that matter.
4. Follow the right people : Use some basic criteria to identify quality folks to follow.
- Nature of Follower – What kind of tweets foes he post? Is this person a spammer?
- URL – Someone with a url preferably a personal one like a blog is much more credible.
- Quality of Tweets – Is there a mix of broadcast tweets and @replies? Are they engaging with other people on Twitter? Are they using Twitterfeed to spam folks with all their tweets?
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A Twitter aside : I got this from Information Week and nope, I’m not surprised by the findings.
Marketing intelligence firm Pear Analytics found that 40% of the tweets on Twitter were about someone eating a sandwich or some other “pointless babble,” 37% were parts of conversations, 9% were re-tweets, or messages with “pass along value,” 6% were self promotion, 4% were spam and 4% were news. Pear Analytics randomly sampled tweets Monday through Friday every 30 minutes for a six-hour period during the day. The company drew its findings from a sample data set of 2,000 tweets.
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5. Limit the Tweets : A hard rule to follow for many die-hard tweeters. It makes a lot of sense. If you keep tweeting hour after hour, your messages will dominate the Twitter homepage of your followers. Another thing to avoid is live-tweeting. Sure, it’s fun and might even be useful , but if you enthusiastically post 50 tweets in a few hours, chances are that you’ll aggravate your followers. Post your experience on a blog entry or just make a series of cogent summaries at the end.
6. Be Interactive : Don’t just broadcast like you own the world and the little people are destined to follow you. Ditto with product plugs. Follow comments and respond to them. Also address queries. Use the search function to find out if someone’s tweeting about your company. If so, respond to the tweet and continue the conversation. And follow ‘em. And ask ‘em to follow you.
7. Avoid inane reply conversations : Twitter isn’t an IM tool. People want to follow you because your messaging adds some value in their lives. Replying to someone’s tweets using @replies (specifically replying to everyone’s tweets) continuously confuses your followers. Use the @reply when you’re adding to a conversation in public with a tweet that can stand on its own or just don’t reply to everyone. “@sandy – yo go girl!” does not cut it. Remember to mix it up. Have replies, general tweets and some links of interest from time to time. If you have to converse with someone use the D command. From this graph by search-internetmarketing.com, see the total number of tweets posted on Twitter
8. Use the Favorites feature : Saving value-added tweets as Favorites on your Twitter account is a great way to highlight your interests to your Followers and visitors to your Twitter profile. Additionally, you can link to your Twitter Favorites from your Website or blog. This is a great way to build a comprehensive profile which will compel more folks to follow you.
9. Don’t just tweet anywhere : Be respectful of your surroundings. Don’t just tweet anywhere about anything. If it’s a wedding ceremony or a court proceeding or any other solemn occasion, please shut your phone off and wait till you’re done with the event to begin tweeting.
10. Know the Twitter syntax : From PC World, here’s a list.
• @username The basic building block of conversations, for public replies to a tweet by the user noted after the @ sign.
• D username For a “Direct message” to only the user in question. “DM” also works.
• RT @username For “Re-Tweet,” or a tweet you want to rebroadcast. Prefaced with the original twitterer’s user name.
The following commands ask Twitter for information or tell it how to behave:
• ON username or OFF username Turns mobile phone notifications on or off for a single user. STOP and QUIT will cut off all Twitter SMS messages for all users. Only cell phone notifications are affected.
• FOLLOW username and LEAVE username To see-or stop seeing-the tweets of a user. Twitter displays a drop-down message saying it has carried out your command. However, to truly take them off your list, go to their Twitter profile and click Remove next to ‘You follow username’.
• WHOIS username Pops up a brief amount of information about the user.
• GET username Retrieves a particular user’s most recent tweet.
• STATS Tells you how many followers you have and how many are following you.
11. Finally, Mind your Tweets : There are stories of people being indiscreet on Twitter and having their indiscretions catch up with them either by prospective employers, or new relationships. You could always set your updates as protected though this will defeat the openness of having a Twitter account.
This completes the Twitter standards post. Have fun!
