Re: the-top-five-dos-and-donts-for-tweeters/

During a coffee break I stumbled across a blog post by Natascha Thomson on her B2B marketing blog and wanted to reply right away. Yet, instead of writing a lengthy comment I opted for replying to her on my own blog – continuing our interchange on social media.

In fact, Natascha was among the first people I “got to know on Twitter first” before enjoying meeting her face-to-face during TechEd and Palo Alto afterwards. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Natascha-2-TechEd tale by now, don’t you ;) Since that time we both have been exploring the twitterverse and for me it still feels like a a rewarding learning experience… the netiquette keeps evolving as do some of the rules.

Sure, some basics have established by now and one is well-advised to understand them, so it’s best to do a little of basic reading first before getting started. I’ve been strongly promoting twitter and its value for information gathering in this high fidelity business for a while now as well as sharing my own insights on a regular basis (with anyone willing to listen.) In this tradition, I just can resist the temptation to reply to Natascha’s post and share my own views… a 2nd opinion so to say. Here it goes…

Review

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Natascha’s work in her new role within SAP. I love how she engages the topic – its the right mix of expertise, research, journalism  and learning-by-doing. She digs social media and is 100% authentic in all she does, says and blogs about – the opposite of blabla or all those bad stereotypes that we have seen in Dilbert comics or the like.

Dilbert.com

As such, I knew it would be a worth-while investment of time to click on the link and read her latest blog. She did not disappoint. The blog post succeeded in the most important aspect of blogging… it had me. I directly wanted to reply to it. Engage. Provide feedback. Maybe get into a conversation or even a discussion. (My frequent readers know that this is one of my own personal battles in web 2.0 and netiquette – the proper feedback mentality. NO SPECTATORS! :))

Her blog post raises a lot of great points and on most topics I can just say “+1″ (meaning, to agree with someone) while on some I want to add my own thoughts and a few follow-up links.

Discourage:

Don’t constantly thank people who have retweeted you. I am all for Twitter etiquette, but it is getting out of hand.  It’s a better idea to list a bunch of people who retweeted you in a single Tweet, but does it really have to happen at all?  Are we really still so fascinated by the fact that our name appears on Twitter? Sure, it’s nice to get a notification that you have been mentioned but I think it’s time to cut down the traffic.

1. RT (Retweets) saying thanks. Agree. I’d rather see one tweet saying thanks to multiple people than several individual ones. This way at least the people that see the post in their timeline know that something of importance has happened. That a big milestone was achieved or anything else that lead to a higher number of congratulations, best wishes etc. I see value in that, especially for people whose timeline is on high volume. I think it’s also ok to say thanks via DM or even follow-up in better ways as mentioned here:

Don’t chit-chat between two people about nothing. Why does that have to be public? Instead, follow each other and take it to the D Tweet area. Would you have a loudconversation in the middle of a room full of people? I’ll help you keep followers and others to cut through the information overload.

2. Chit-chat. True. There may be valid exceptions though in case the topic may be of broader interest to a lot of people who are following me. It also depends on the  person and their usage of twitter. How verbose their timeline is. Some people just post more than others. So, for example I know people like @oliver, who do not tweet that much, but if they do it’s 1st class. #instant_click (or foursquare notifications on how he’s reaching out for world domination by starting in his new home-town.) On the other hand we have chatty or twitty people like @yojibee and that’s why people love her. It clearly relates to your personality and to ‘branding’ (next topic)… and at the end of the day, hey, it’s your twitter handle – tweet what you must, but the web does not forget ;)

Don’t have the same Twitter account for business and your friends/family, unless you don’t have a life outside of work. It comes back to having your own brand. Make it worthwhile for people to follow you and only throw in private milestones.

3. Private/public Twitter account. I still have doubts on that one.. For one, I think that a pure business twitter stream is shallow or little more than a human bot. Don’t want to offend anyone, but I just lack the social aspect of such a twitter handle that smells too marketing to me to like it in big doses. Give me a person behind the handle/brand. Jon Reed nailed it by saying that the mix is the important factor.

jonerp | Jon Reed
@ a Twitter stream without some personality is like pasta without sauce. The catch is - finding your spice combination. :)
November 22, 2010 7:06 pm

I would also recommend to carefully consider not tweeting about trivial things. It’s hard to generalize though as there are indeed peeps on my time-line like @oswaldxxl, @thorstenster or @skeohan that just are hilarious and witty and I love their random tweets! It’s just that such tweets that may make “Twitter an accelerated intimator on full display“:

SAPMentors | SAP Mentors
via @: @ @ Twitter as an accelerated intimator on full display @ #SAPTechEd. I already "knew" half the @
January 14, 2011 2:06 am
krbenedict | Kevin R Benedict
Kevin's Enterprise Mobility Strategies: Twitter and Tweet Convert - Kevin Benedict #sap #sapmentors #mobile http://t.co/duP1ggF
January 12, 2011 11:51 pm

Don’t leave the profile section in your Twitter account blank. Why would anybody follow anybody who does not state their “brand”? Let people know what to expect from you and your Tweets, especially if you are interested in developing a following.

4. Blank profiles. Totally right. A face-less profile does not attract followers and may even result in people blocking you (not allowing you to follow them.) You don’t necessarily need a real photo of you, but  an individual avatar is already much better than any of the standard ones. A blank bio just says “ignore me.” #auto_ignore

Don’t send automated messages thanking people for following you and asking them to click on a URL. First of all, automation is against the spirit of a personal Twitter conversation (so don’t make it so obvious) and second, it seems fishy to send a URL right away; I would never click on it.

5. Automated messages. True, that’s an absolute nogo (at least for the average person.) If you are a high executive, royal or rock star or the like, then you may come up with your own rules I guess.

(Had to add this last one: Do we really need yet another “paper.li” aka the Joe Blocks Daily? Think before you create one, please.)

6. Dailies. Couldn’t agree more, hardly see value in > 90% of the dailies. The contributors need to be hand-picked and at least have a big overlap in interest/topics in order for it to bring any value. I do enjoy two paper.li – based newspapers though; namely the The sapmentors Daily from @martin_english and the SAP Community Gazette by @freakyfays. They got great content on most days. So, if I was not able to follow twitter during the day for whatever reasons I may consider checking out the dailies to get me me back to speed.

(Really the last one: Don’t automate all your Tweets to show up on your FB page. Not fun for your friends who follow you on both of these channels.)

7. Cross-posting. I agree. I would prefer it if people would not cross-post all their tweets on Facebook and LinkedIn, and I have set appropriate filters where possible. A great tool for selective postings to Facebook from Twitter is Selective Tweets, which allows you to cross-post from Twitter to Facebook by adding a #fb (or any other customizable trigger word) to a post. You may have seen posts like that already…

Encourage:

Please do think about why you are on Twitter (= your brand) and be somewhat consistent in your messages. You owe this to your followers so that they don’t have to pick out relevant content between your notifications that you just checked into “Pizza Parlor” or “washed your cat”. I am not saying, don’t have a personality, but as Twitter is public, it’s good for you and the rest of us if there is a theme.  It will help you build a consistent following and reduce the noise out there. Think “Tweet pollution”.

1. Twitter brand. Spot on.

Do participate in #FollowFriday or #FF. It’s a nice way to recommend somebody who sends good Tweets and to show them that their Tweets are not going unappreciated or even unnoticed. A piece of Twitter etiquette that I find endearing. Ideally, don’t just Tweet an @handle but explain WHY this person is worth following.

2. Follow Friday #ff. Nothing to add here either. :)

Do send original Tweets (not just RTs) to convey opinions on relevant topics or engage with your followers.

3. NoRTs. (=Not only Retweets). RTs are a great way to share info. Think twice what you want to achieve. Don’t just retweet when everybody else does. If you like something and find it worth sharing then RT it. You may want to wait for a while and help the OP (original poster) by extending his reach by retweeting him at another time (think of timezones) or a different audience. If a tweet got retweeted a lot and I want to share it with my unique followers that may not have seen it, but without spamming the time-line of all my followers. I just RT w/o any editing. so that only those people see it that missed the original tweet. If I have something to share or want to promote something I try to squeeze in just a little info about why I find this worth RTing into the tweet. (Can be a challenge sometimes…)

Last, when you RT and add a comment, try to make it clear which part is your comment vs. the original Tweet,  add a carrot and your initials (^NT) if necessary. I’ve been engaged in many confusing Twitter conversations caused by this issue.

4. RT formatting. True. I’ve seen several formats. Sometimes people add their view before the original text that starts with RT. Others use “>>” to separate their own thoughts from the original tweet. I go for the later as I find it more intuitive to read (it’s in sequential order.) If multiple people are sharing a twitter handle the initials do help in transparency :)

Do retweet relevant pieces of information and URLs to your followers. And if there are enough characters, do add your own commentary or interpretation to show that you are retweeting it for a reason or have additional insights. Lately, I’ve heard people complain about too much retweeting. I say, make sure the information is relevant for your followers and that the 140 characters you use to describe the URL are not misleading.

5. Add value-add. Nicely put, no further ado.

One more thing

Brilliant ending… :)

I am a huge fan of Twitter and I have at one time or another broken all of the above rules. Follow the rules you like and ignore the rest! :-) And please share your own do’s and don’ts for Twitter if you have the time.

There’s an exception to every rule indeed. Gr8 read all along. Consider this the longest #ff recommendation I ever wrote so far. :)

steinermatt | Matthias Steiner
#ff @ 100% authentic social media - articles like this one: "The Top Five Do’s and Don’ts for Tweeters" http://bit.ly/eBbZXn"
January 14, 2011 4:57 pm