HEAD’S UP: This is a long post! So if you’re not in the mood for read­ing pretty cool advice regard­ing Twit­ter and my expe­ri­ence with it so far, then you may want to stop read­ing after this sen­tence. Still here? I’m gonna’ go with YES! Now, if you’re curi­ous and have some time to spare, then go ahead and con­tinue cause you never know — you may actu­ally like or agree with what I have to share.

image credit: www.binoyxj.com

In all hon­esty, when I first joined Twit­ter, I had it set up so that it would sim­ply be a way for my blog posts to auto­mat­i­cally be sent to my feed. I didn’t really get what was so inter­est­ing about all these ‘tweo­ple’ chat­ting away and shar­ing ran­dom stuff — at least, that’s how I first saw it. But in the last few weeks, I’ve learned oth­er­wise. I have spent more time on the awe­some micro-blogging giant and have real­ized that it’s so much more than shame­less self-promotion. I’ve come to under­stand the actual pur­pose of Twit­ter and what it can do when used properly.

Twit­ter and me…

I’ve become a much more active Twit­terer now — in the sense that I now Tweet, Retweet, use Hash­tags (#), DM, @reply, #FF… I even have some Saved Searches and have been added to sev­eral inter­est­ing lists by fel­low Tweet­ers. I’ve seen the pos­i­tive effect it has had on the level of inter­ac­tiv­ity from peers, the qual­ity of fol­low­ers that I’ve gained (& aspire to con­tinue gain­ing) and the traf­fic on my blog.  In doing so, I’ve come across and inter­acted with some fan­tas­tic Social Media experts, enthu­si­asts, fans, gurus… which I now fol­low (who also some­times fol­low me).

Call me a new­bie or old fash­ioned, but I actu­ally take the time to read every post I Retweet. Yes, it’s time con­sum­ing, but I’m curi­ous and inter­ested in accu­mu­lat­ing as much knowl­edge as I can — plus, I believe that’s the way it should be when it comes to retweet­ing a post — unless if it’s just a sim­ple mes­sage with­out any links. After all, I want to know what mes­sage it is I’m help­ing to spread!

I’ve also noticed that peo­ple can be respon­sive to your actions and appre­cia­tive of your sup­port in spread­ing their word. It’s some­times even an incen­tive for them to rec­i­p­ro­cate the ges­ture. And of course, I’ve learned and enjoy to do just that. When some­one takes the time to Retweet one of my Tweets, I @mention them to say thank you. And I usu­ally try doing so the same day if pos­si­ble — actu­ally within a cou­ple hours — because let’s face it, with the amount of Tweets that are posted, they can even­tu­ally for­get what Tweet you’re referring to.

I also reply to non-automated, per­son­al­ized (or what seem to be) DM’s. If some­one has taken the time to con­tact me about some­thing, then I think it’s only polite to do the same and reply. Yes­ter­day, while vis­it­ing a well known and reputed blog (not to name names but a pretty big Social Media one), I came across a typo they had made in writ­ing the name of another hugely famous site. Luck­ily for me, that per­son is fol­low­ing me back so I was able to send them a DM noti­fy­ing them of the error in an appro­pri­ate and friendly man­ner. They nicely replied thank­ing me for bring­ing it to their atten­tion and imme­di­ately fixed it. This may sound like a silly lit­tle story but it did ini­ti­ate some kind of per­sonal inter­ac­tion and it proved to me that Twit­ter ‘hot­shots’ (and I mean that in a good way) will also take the time to reply.

Fol­low me, I fol­low you?

I don’t auto­mat­i­cally fol­low peo­ple who fol­low me and I don’t have auto­mated DM or Tweet­ing ser­vices. I per­son­ally write every­thing and try per­son­al­iz­ing each mes­sage while I’m at it. I have learned that peo­ple are more respon­sive when they know a pri­vate mes­sage is directed at them and not at a gazil­lion other peo­ple as well. It might just be that it’s still easy for me to do that since I don’t have a mil­lion fol­low­ers and I don’t fol­low a mil­lion peo­ple. Actu­ally, I have no inten­tion of accu­mu­lat­ing that many Twit­ter­ers on my fol­low list [although I’m sure it can be a nice ego boost to see a num­ber like that fol­low­ing you ]. I truly believe that it’s not about the quan­tity but about the qual­ity of fol­low­ers you have. There­fore, for every per­son that fol­lows me, I actu­ally open their pro­file and their site if they have one and see what they’re about and what they’re Tweet­ing [which means — it’s gen­er­ally nice for me to see some kind of infor­ma­tion in the pro­file]. I also try to find and read an inter­est­ing post of theirs that I can in turn share with my own list (an ongo­ing process that I choose to engage in).

I don’t mean to sound arro­gant or as the “All Mighty Twit­terer Scan­ner” in any way; quite the con­trary. I’m look­ing to learn and inter­act in a friendly and pro­fes­sional way with real and like-minded indi­vid­u­als. I want to find peo­ple that share sim­i­lar Social Media (and other) inter­ests and that have insight­ful expe­ri­ences and com­ments to share; those that have been in their respec­tive field a while, those that are active, those that are will­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with both the “somebody’s” and the “nobody’s” of the Twit­ter­sphere. Believe it or not, this is com­ing from some­one who’s not a big fan of inter­act­ing online with peo­ple she doesn’t know. For Pete’s sake [old school expres­sion, I know ], I don’t even accept or reply to pri­vate mes­sages from peo­ple I don’t know on my per­sonal Face­book account. Actu­ally, until my nit­ty­Griddy “Like” page, I had never writ­ten or replied to some­one on a pub­lic wall!

image credit & design by: www.luclatulippe.com

Wait…I’m get­ting to the point!

I ini­tially meant for my open­ing para­graph to be no more than a few lines, but as usual, I got a bit car­ried away and there­fore went back and included my lit­tle HEAD’S UP note:-). Please under­stand that by no means do I claim to be a Social Media expert — or any other expert for that mat­ter. I’m just an enthu­si­ast with a pas­sion for writ­ing and learn­ing. Being an expert would mean I have noth­ing more to learn, and that is surely not the case — for any­one! I love to take in new things and the fact that I do, is what enabled me to write this some­what use­ful post.

What I mean to share or iden­tify in this loooong arti­cle, are the things peo­ple should refrain from Tweet­ing — or more pre­cisely the things they shouldn’t share and that I will most likely zap when read­ing my Twitt feed. Com­mon sense tells me what to tweet and not to tweet, so I won’t get into the “Do-Do’s” of Twit­ter, since I’ve pretty much just told you in the last few paragraphs.

Again, everyone’s enti­tled to their own opin­ion and free to tweet away what they want. So this may just be a per­sonal vent­ing space or it could turn out to have some pretty use­ful gen­eral tips. Either way, I’ve come to real­ize that after read­ing a few sim­i­lar “What Not to Tweet” type posts, that I’m not too far off from what Social Media espe­cially Twit­ter connoisseur’s, also sug­gest not to do.

On that note…

Here’s my list of Twit­ter “No-No’s”!

Note: I’ve decided to spare you and keep these nice and short and straight to the point. Because if you’ve got­ten this far, then I think you’ve had your dosage of nit­ty­Griddy read­ing for the day .

image credit: www.projecter.de

1. Don’t OVERTWEET by telling us your every move:

Sce­nario 1:

@nobody: On my way to the kitchen to eat dinner!

@nobody: Eat­ing din­ner and enjoy­ing yummy home cooked fries!

@nobody: Wow! Ate way too much, need to digest. Gonna’ go watch some TV!

Scene­rio 2:

@nobody: On my way to the store to buy groceries.

@nobody: Just bought the juici­est look­ing straw­ber­ries. Can’t wait to bla bla bla…

@nobody: OMG! I just bumped into Betsy at the store. Haven’t seen her in years. Hi @Betsy!

Per­son­ally, I’m not inter­ested in when and what you eat and what you bought. I’m happy for you that you’re eat­ing and shop­ping for food, but really…do I/we care? But, please do give my best to Betsy !

2. Don’t OVERSHARE:

@nobody: My boyfriend and I just broke up. I can’t believe he cheated on me!

@nobody: I’m really sick and have been throw­ing up all morning!

@nobody: My dog just took the biggest $!@% on the neighbor’s lawn!

Now how much of those things do I really want to know? My advice is call a friend and tell them all about it. Or bet­ter yet, post a sta­tus on Face­book since that’s what a lot of peo­ple seem to be doing and see how many reac­tions you get (sar­casm alert!).

3. Don’t have PERSONAL Conversations:

@nobody: Hey, @nobody2 — you there?

@nobody2: @nobody: Yes, hi, what’s up?

@nobody: @nobody2: Not much. What you up to? Did you go to work today?

@nobody2: @nobody: Yeah I did. OMG, have to tell you some­thing really funny. Check your DM!

Ok guys, you seem to know each other and share cer­tain things. Which would mean you either have each other’s phone num­bers or are on BBM. Please use either or. Hav­ing a full length back and forth per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter is prob­a­bly not the best place. It may seem like an instant mes­sag­ing ser­vice but it’s not. But then again, what do I know?

4. Don’t try & TREND what’s not Trend-a-ble:

@nobody: I just ate the best pasta on the planet. #mashable

Regard­less of how good that pasta is, I sin­cerely doubt that it has any­thing to do with Pete Cashmore’s Social Media Guide. And try­ing to pass on your tweet as if it does, is really not cool and a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I don’t know how happy #mash­able fans that are fol­low­ing Trend­ing Top­ics will be to see your tweets.

5. Don’t AUTOTWEET or auto­mat­i­cally DM new followers:

If you need to set up an auto­mated tweet to send out a few mes­sages while you are oth­er­wise engaged, then it’s fine. But don’t auto­mate your entire feed to your account.  Peo­ple will take notice. Also, don’t auto­mat­i­cally DM your new fol­low­ers with a stan­dard mes­sage. It’s seen as spam and I for one, am much less likely to reply. If I’m not mis­taken, the whole point of Twit­ter is to be more per­son­ally involved and engag­ing. Want­ing to pro­mote your brand, prod­uct, site, whatever…is fine, but do so in a less bla­tant way so it doesn’t scream shame­less promotion.

6. Don’t WAIT days before @replying to someone:

If you’ve been car­ry­ing a con­ver­sa­tion of @replies, don’t wait a day or two between mes­sages. The prob­a­bil­ity is that by then, they will have for­got­ten what you were talk­ing about. Most peo­ple (includ­ing me) will expect a reply within a cou­ple hours max. I know this sounds a bit demand­ing and can be dif­fi­cult at times, but do try to abide by this “unwrit­ten” rule. Also, don’t for­get to use the appro­pri­ate Twit­ter ter­mi­nolo­gies (@, #, RT, etc.) so that they can receive and/or go back to find your messages.

7. Don’t use long ongo­ing MULTI-TWEETS:

@nobody: I was watch­ing this movie the other day and it hit me that I had com­pletely for­got­ten to go check the fridge to see if I still had enough but­ter to make…

@nobody: …my deli­cious choco­late cake for this awe­some party that I’m hav­ing at my place tomor­row night…

I think the 140 char­ac­ter rule is there for a rea­son. I know it can be annoy­ing some­times to fit every­thing in and I admit to using short­hand once in a while (although it’s also not usu­ally rec­om­mended as it can be con­fus­ing) but try your best to remain within that 140 limit. If you absolutely must then use an extra mes­sage. So far, I’ve been able to adjust to that — and as you can see from the amount of writ­ing on this post — it can pose a chal­lenge at times !

I’m sure there are quite a few more Twit­ter Don’ts but for now these should suffice.

Phew… that’s it folks! I can now leave you with this awe­some comic from the tal­ented Matthew Inman from The Oat­meal for a much fun­nier rep­re­sen­ta­tion of “Ten Things You Need to Stop Tweet­ing About”.

Do you have any other Twit­ter No-No’s? Post your comments.