How To Use Twitter Responsibly
As many people as there are on twitter, people use it differently and for different reasons. Now I’m not suggesting anyone play the Tweet Police, but there is at some point a right and wrong way to do things, even tweeting! Everyone who has ever had to Unfollow someone should understand this. But hey Twitter is great and can be a lot of fun if everyone plays nice!
This is just quick little guide of some ways you can tweet responsibly and keep your readers from Unfollowing you and encourage more people to follow you. Who knows maybe you’ll even be a leader on twitter one day!
Tweeting what your followers want to read- A big part of this is understanding your followers, who they are and why the follow you, something that may be hard to do if you never talk to them and look at their post. If you have a followers with a range of interest try topics that would be interesting to nearly anyone, or even talk about current events, ask for their opinions even. If you happen to have a blog you can tweet post from that too, as long as the content would be interesting or useful for more than half your audience. This it the mistake that individuals and companies a like tend to make when using twitter. Think of it as providing a service, delivering information to your followers for their benefit, not yours.
Engaging, and contributing to a Conversation - The only way to get to know people is to…get to know them! If you go to a party or a club you see a group of people surrounding one individual and they all are having a good time. Why because that man or woman has engaged their audience and connected with them! Being in a conversation though also requires this rare skill that most people lack, the ability to listen, something very different than simply waiting for your turn to speak.
Learn to follow people for the right reasons – I have a few personal rules about this and you can adopt them if you like, I will follow only 4 people for everyone 1 person following me. I only follow people that I either know, share a common interest with, have a website that I visit regularly, share a profession or hobby with me, or whom I am a fan of. I also try to either mention, reply or direct message everyone I follow at least once or twice. There is not point in following people who you don’t have any personal or professional interest in, or don’t want to support in some way. As for following people who follow me, I only do that if they have met some of the criteria I already mentioned, we have to have common profession or hobby. Of course for entertainment purposes its perfectly fine for you to follow people like Nick Cannon, Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus, or Lance Armstrong.
Branding, Branding, Branding - If you have an ambition at all in life and you’re not branding yourself I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, that you are doing something horribly wrong. As far as twitter goes branding yourself starts with picking your screen name, avatar, background and filling out your bio. If you have a blog or website somewhere you can also post a link to it. When people know who you are and what you’re about they can make the decision to follow you and look at what you have to say without fear of you being a spammer or a bot.
Remember that everyone is watching - Bare in mind that whatever you say or do on twitter is going to be in the public eye, and it could come back to haunt you when someone Google’s your name. Future employers and current employers have decided to start scrutinizing employees online activities even when they are on their own free time, why? Again this is about Branding and it being a negative reflection on the company, not to mention how quickly social media can go viral. If you wouldn’t want something on the record, probably not a good idea to tweet it.
Don’t Auto Reply , Period - I shouldn’t have to say this, I shouldn’t have to explain it, NO means NO!
Stop Tweeting at Work – If your supervisor hasn’t specifically tasked you with handling a Twitter account to help the company in some way, don’t tweet at work. If you are not in the marketing or advertising department, and if majority of your tweets are not work related, and your followers are not new or current clients or potential leads, don’t tweet at work. If it is a legitimate part of your job to tweet at work, whenever someone ask you about it, stand up for yourself, don’t be nervous or shy about it, and bombard them with as much information about how valuable it is to the companies image and brand as possible, so that everyone watching will stay off your back and remember that it really is your job, and that is servers a purpose.
Take a break at least one day a week – Hard to do sometimes but a must! Take a day off from twitter, or a least most of the day if at all possible, once a week or more. More often than not you’ll still be in the loop when you get back.
If something is good RT – If a post is good feel free to RT or (Retweet) it to ensure that your own followers can see it if they would find it interesting. Also when people people RT your post as common courtesy you should reply to them with a thank you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found a great tutorial or wallpaper or a great person to follow just because someone was good enough to RT that post!
Last but not least, Mind Your Manners – This should go without saying but I’m saying it anyway. Mind your manners, and do onto others as you would have them do on to you. This is pretty basic but overlooked in only EVERYTHING people do or don’t do on a regular basis, common courtesy has ceased to be common, which is just lazy honestly. Do better.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell if any of you out there would like to add anything I’d love to hear it!
How To Use Twitter Responsibly …
A Guide to get you followed on twitter and have you tweeting what your followers want to read. …
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