Four Simple Ways To Not Suck at Twitter

I don’t mean to get all preachy with what I’m about to say because I do truly believe there are different ways to use Twitter. I also don’t buy into the “you’re doing it wrong” argument because unless you’re breaking Twitter’s terms of service, you’re not really technically doing anything wrong.

That being said, I do think there are a few points of etiquette that everyone should follow, even if they’re not violations of Twitter’s ToS.

1. No Auto DMs
Auto DMs are the work of the devil. Auto DMs are Twitter equivalent of the “first” post in a comments section. If I decide to follow you, I don’t need an automatically generated direct message sent back to me thanking me for the follow and giving me more ways to get in touch with you. This is why Twitter created the “bio” section – tell me about yourself there and show me who you are with the content you post in your timeline. Auto DMs should be a violation of Twitter as it’s spam in my eyes, and if I receive an auto DM from you, you get instantly unfollowed.

2. Don’t Retweet Every Response
The beauty of the “@ reply” is that I don’t have to read it if I’m not following the other person you’re talking to. This was done to prevent people from being exposed to useless conversations that won’t provide any value to them. I can’t tell you how many times I will see something along these lines:

Offender: The red one RT @OffendersFriend What dress are you wearing tonight?

Nobody outside of @Offender and @OffendersFriend cares about this discussion, so please, do us all a favor and get your finger away from the retweet button and move it over to the @ reply. There are instances where it’s perfectly acceptable to do a conversational retweet, but more often that not, it’s from someone with an enormous amount of followers and is asked the same question multiple times (AKA, not you). I hardly think the color of your dress is going to end up in a FAQ somewhere.

3. Don’t Follow for Follow
It’s comical the amount of people that do this. Every day I get about 10 or 20 new followers, and three days later they almost all unfollow me because I didn’t reciprocate the follow (aka “Follow Back”). The topic of “quality vs. quantity” in regards to Twitter followers has been beaten to death, but let’s face it…people like numbers and want to feel like they are better than others with enormous Twitter followers, even if they don’t care at all about you and what you say. Twitter followers are not Garbage Pail Kids cards – you don’t need to collect them all. If you are following me, please do so because you want to read what I say, not add me to your collection. Oh, and if you want me to follow you back, you should probably read this first.

4. Don’t Celebrate Follower Milestones
Big deal – you’re reaching you’re 1,000th follower. Nobody gives a crap except for you, so please don’t make any thinly veiled attempts of showing appreciation when we all know you’re tweet of “Only 6 more followers to 1,000 – I love you all” is just a ploy to get you more followers for your collection.

Did I miss any? If so, you know what to do. (hint: look below…see that comment box?)