If you’re on Twitter - which you no doubt are - you know it’s very easy to get annoyed with people. Sometimes your feed can be a sea of hashtags, links, and RTs from people you don’t know or care about. Other times it can be absolutely brilliant.
Despite top ten lists, ranty tweets and and numerous articles being published on Twitter Etiquette, it would appear there are still some Twiter cardinal rules people just do not get. And, quite frankly, it’s enraging.
Even the best of people are guilty of breaking these rules, so don’t beat yourself up too much if you find yourself guilty of one or more of these. There’s no need to defend yourself of explain away your sins - just simply stop doing the following. Immediately.
1) Stop Retweeting "Follow Fridays"
I have seen numerous people write blog posts and tweet about why this is ridiculous, but let me break it down for you: it simply isn't logical to hit the retweet button when someone recommends you for “Follow Friday”.
Here is why:
A) You are retweeting to your followers, aka PEOPLE WHO ALREADY FOLLOW YOU. Unless it is Stephen Fry or Lady Gaga who has recommended people follow you - your followers do not care, simply because they already follow you. We are not impressed by other people recommending that everyone should follow you because we were ahead of the curve and already do. Get it?
B) It is annoying and makes you look like a tit, even if we know that, really, you’re quite lovely.
STOP THIS AT ONCE.
2) Stop Replying to People Unnecessarily
In the professional world, you only CC people in to an email when absolutely necessary. Maybe in the first few emails it’s important to CC in Carol from Marketing, but once the conversation has moved away from its initial topic, you should stop CC’ing Carol from Marketing. Carol from Marketing doesn’t need to know what you guys are doing this weekend, she only cared about the lunch meeting on Friday. You are now clogging up Carol’s inbox, and Carol hates that. And now, she's starting to hate you, too.
The same goes for tweeting.
If you’re joining in on a conversation with someone, or piggybacking on something someone else said, including them in on the first reply or so, or literally CC’in them in to a tweet, is fine. It’s polite and more often than not appreciated.
However, if you have a long conversation there comes a point when you can stop replying to everyone. If you're still replying to every single person in an tweet chain when it's only two of you who are activley replying, you are probably now unecessarily clogging up someone's reply feed the same way you clogged up Carol’s inbox. There comes a time when the conversation can be between two people, not seven.
And, while we're talking about replying to people unnecessarily, the same goes for making plans tonight with your girlfriend (who you bloody live with) or lunch with your colleague, who sits across the office from you. None of us care, none of us are impressed, so pick up the fecking phone or send them a damn email.
STOP THIS AT ONCE.
3) Never Send Auto DMs
Just don’t. It’s not friendly, it’s impersonal. It's not savvy, it's embarrassing. And no doubt it will make the person who followed you think twice about their decision to do so, because obviously you’re not as clever or awesome as they originally thought because you think it’s OK to send an auto DM.
STOP THIS AT ONCE.
4) Stop Retweeting Your Work Account
We realize you want to promote your work, but here’s the thing: if we wanted to know about your work, we’d simply follow your professional or your business’sTwitter account. There is no need to RT or link to every single thing that you tweet from your website/blog/business’s account. It is annoying and complete overkill.
STOP THIS AT ONCE.
5) Stop Clicking on Spam Links
Sure, I can understand your concern that some posted a “LOL horrible photo of you” on some website, or that someone “wrote this about you in a blog post” - but let’s think about this. Firstly, why do you care? Are you that paranoid? (And if you are, it’s called Google Alerts, FYI.) Every DM you get asking you to click on a link, especially if it’s not from someone you speak to quite regularly and doesn’t even say your name in the DM, why click on it?! Come one people! Getting spammed is seriously annoying, and - again - it makes you look like a n00b.
STOP THIS AT ONCE.
Now, young padawan, go forth. Use this knowledge for good, and help make all of our Twitter feeds a happier, less wanky place.
Image via eldh's Flickr