Don’t be Twitter Shy: Intro to Twitter

They say showing up is half the battle. And this certainly applies to social media, in general, and Twitter, specifically. Twitter is all about engaging in conversations, offering answers or resources to questions posed through tweets, sharing interesting links to articles and adding original content when you have something great to say.

Here are my top 10 tips for being a good Twitter community member:

1. Have a photo of yourself or where not appropriate to have one’s photo at least a logo. No eggheads allowed. I consider all eggheads to be spam;
2. Complete your profile, including your location;
3. Retweets are great, but be sure to add some of your own original content to the Twitter stream;
4. Follow real people with similar interests, not just news organizations, businesses and celebrities. They won’t follow you back or respond to you;
5. Don’t send auto Direct Messages (DMs) at all, but especially don’t send them to new followers; and NEVER ask someone to go “Like” you on your Facebook page. It’s just plain annoying. In my view, DMs are reserved for private communications between friends or those who have real business with me;
6. Engage in conversations with other people. You can easily do this by answering a person’s general question and carrying on a conversation with those who respond or by asking a general question directed to your Twitter stream and conversing with those who answer you.
7. Always respond to tweets that are to you, unless it’s spam.
8. Don’t be afraid to mark a user as spam, if you truly believe the user is a spammer. Telltale signs: no profile or short profile, sexy photo, few tweets or no tweets, few followers or zero followers, following a large number.
9. Be smart. Don’t tweet personal information, including phone numbers, address, email address,  information about being away from your home, etc. and
10. Be professional and polite, especially if you are on Twitter representing your own business or you are an employee representing a business. Don’t engage in inappropriate discussions, post inappropriate photos or use inappropriate hashtags.

This is just the beginning. There are many more unwritten “rules” of Twitter. Most of it is trial and error though. So, follow these tips and jump into the Twitter stream. We’ll keep giving more tips too; so, keep coming back here for more; or feel free to ask us a question.

Anna