I have recently joined twitter and honestly I just loved it. In process of understanding more, I came across this article on Tweet Etiquette’s from Joel Comm, co-author of Twitter Power. I found it useful and thought to share it with you all.
Every conversation has rules. We know not to interrupt someone when they're talking. We know not to use bad language when we talk. We know not to talk too loudly.
And we know too how and when to break all of the rules.
Exactly the same is true for a Twitter conversation. The site hasn't been around for long, but Twitterers have already tried to figure out something like Twittering etiquette.
Some of those etiquette rules are smart, sensible, and should always be followed. Others are smart, sensible, and should usually be followed.
While it's important to know the rules, it's just as important then to know when to break them -- and what happens when you do.
1. Don't spam: This is one rule you can't break. Spammers don't survive long on Twitter. They don't build followers. Any followers they do get don't read their tweets and the number of conversions they can generate will be so tiny that as a marketing method, you'd probably be better off printing a thousand flyers, folding them into paper airplanes and tossing them out of your office window.
2. Follow style rules: Twitter's founders may have had mobile phones in mind when they designed the service, and plenty of users may be typing their updates from their handheld devices, but Twitter isn't exactly the same as SMS messaging.
That means the language needs to look more like real words than the usual SMS-style abbreviations.
3. Give credit for retweets: One of the things that makes Twitter such a powerful tool is the fact that information placed on the site can quickly go viral. When one person spots a good tweet, they can pass that message on to their own followers, and soon it's spreading right across the Twitterverse and beyond.
For a marketer, that's like hitting the jackpot.
On Twitter, it's done by retweeting: Twitterers can simply copy someone else's tweet and tweet it themselves . . . but they must give credit to the original Twitterer. The format for retweets, then, looks like this: "Retweet @username: original tweet."
4. Stick to 140 characters: You have to stick to 140 characters, right? That's all they give you, and they do it for a good reason. Being starved of space stops you waffling and sparks your creativity. It's what Twitter is all about.
Twitter gives you 140 characters because that's all that can fit through SMS systems. If mobile phone companies could handle messages of 200 characters, then that's probably how long our tweets would be.
5. Follow people who follow you: How many people you should follow on Twitter can always make for a great discussion point. Follow thousands of people and you're not going to be able to read all of their tweets. Inevitably, you'll miss tweets you'd really like to read, and you'll look like someone who has lots of acquaintances but no real friends.
In practice, it doesn't always work this way. I follow more than 1,700 people. That's a lot less than the 4,500 or so who follow me, and while I know I'm missing tweets, I love the fact that when I look at my Twitter page I can see a huge variety of different conversations taking place.
Spend any time on Twitter and you're going to come across plenty of other rules too. Some purists, for example, argue that your tweets should only describe what you're doing, not what you're thinking or planning to do. I think that's far too restrictive: if it sparks a conversation and entertains your followers, it's a fair topic. If they don't like it, they should read someone else's tweets.
And that's really the ultimate test of tweet etiquette: how other people react and how you would react to the same kind of thing.
I personally feel that this article has covered many things related to etiquette of using twitter. In simple words, if we are building followers and they're responding to what we are writing, we are following the right rules.
Every conversation has rules. We know not to interrupt someone when they're talking. We know not to use bad language when we talk. We know not to talk too loudly.
And we know too how and when to break all of the rules.
Exactly the same is true for a Twitter conversation. The site hasn't been around for long, but Twitterers have already tried to figure out something like Twittering etiquette.
Some of those etiquette rules are smart, sensible, and should always be followed. Others are smart, sensible, and should usually be followed.
While it's important to know the rules, it's just as important then to know when to break them -- and what happens when you do.
1. Don't spam: This is one rule you can't break. Spammers don't survive long on Twitter. They don't build followers. Any followers they do get don't read their tweets and the number of conversions they can generate will be so tiny that as a marketing method, you'd probably be better off printing a thousand flyers, folding them into paper airplanes and tossing them out of your office window.
2. Follow style rules: Twitter's founders may have had mobile phones in mind when they designed the service, and plenty of users may be typing their updates from their handheld devices, but Twitter isn't exactly the same as SMS messaging.
That means the language needs to look more like real words than the usual SMS-style abbreviations.
3. Give credit for retweets: One of the things that makes Twitter such a powerful tool is the fact that information placed on the site can quickly go viral. When one person spots a good tweet, they can pass that message on to their own followers, and soon it's spreading right across the Twitterverse and beyond.
For a marketer, that's like hitting the jackpot.
On Twitter, it's done by retweeting: Twitterers can simply copy someone else's tweet and tweet it themselves . . . but they must give credit to the original Twitterer. The format for retweets, then, looks like this: "Retweet @username: original tweet."
4. Stick to 140 characters: You have to stick to 140 characters, right? That's all they give you, and they do it for a good reason. Being starved of space stops you waffling and sparks your creativity. It's what Twitter is all about.
Twitter gives you 140 characters because that's all that can fit through SMS systems. If mobile phone companies could handle messages of 200 characters, then that's probably how long our tweets would be.
5. Follow people who follow you: How many people you should follow on Twitter can always make for a great discussion point. Follow thousands of people and you're not going to be able to read all of their tweets. Inevitably, you'll miss tweets you'd really like to read, and you'll look like someone who has lots of acquaintances but no real friends.
In practice, it doesn't always work this way. I follow more than 1,700 people. That's a lot less than the 4,500 or so who follow me, and while I know I'm missing tweets, I love the fact that when I look at my Twitter page I can see a huge variety of different conversations taking place.
Spend any time on Twitter and you're going to come across plenty of other rules too. Some purists, for example, argue that your tweets should only describe what you're doing, not what you're thinking or planning to do. I think that's far too restrictive: if it sparks a conversation and entertains your followers, it's a fair topic. If they don't like it, they should read someone else's tweets.
And that's really the ultimate test of tweet etiquette: how other people react and how you would react to the same kind of thing.
I personally feel that this article has covered many things related to etiquette of using twitter. In simple words, if we are building followers and they're responding to what we are writing, we are following the right rules.
