Twitter Don'ts : Are You Annoying People With Your Tweets?

If you are on twitter, and yes, you should be, you might notice people occasionally tweeting out their twitter pet peeves. One of the most common is "Don't auto-dm! It's spam and makes me unfollow you!" *


 Another that was originally on my list but I saw tweeted out this weekend by @adventuroo was "If all you do is tweet out 'inspirational' quotes, I will never ever follow you. #thereisaidit"


But, like everything else, Twitter is a learning process and it's not like you know these things right off the bat, you have to figure it out as you go. 


Here's my list of Twitter Don'ts to help you along:

Don't get mad and unfollow someone if they don't follow you back immediately.  It might take someone a few days to get caught up on twitter notification emails.  Or, sometimes twitter doesn't send them out for every person who follows.  TWEET with the person: talk to them and they'll probably follow you.

Don't just tweet "hey" or "good morning" to someone and be mad that that isn't enough to get them to follow you or even respond.  Spammers do that, too, so it's hard to tell you apart from the spammers.

Don't follow a bunch of people just hoping for return follows and then unfollow them all a day or two later. 

Don't RT all day long.  It's really nice to RT an awesome tweet or link- you definitely should show some RT love. But, if this is all you do, you start looking a little a robot instead of a person.

Don't get spammy with your links: twitter is a great tool to get your blog posts out there. But, if you are tweeting out the same link 4 times in an hour, it's annoying.**

Unless you have something super important that you are tweeting, Don't add "pls rt" to the end of your tweets. People will RT if they like what you tweeted.  And by super important, I mean super important to everyone, not just you.

Don't get upset if no one replies to something you asked on twitter. Tweets go by quickly. You can ask again.  Just not 30 seconds after you first asked.

Don't be a twitter-stalker.  Twitter is one place where it's perfectly acceptable to jump right into someone else's conversation. But, if you jump into the same person's conversation every single time they are tweeting with someone else, it gets a little creepy.

Don't only talk to the same people all day, every day.  Yes, twitter is for interaction. And you'll get to know some people really well and want to talk to them more than others.  But, if someone views your profile page and all they see is you tweeting the same handful of people and no one else, you look clique-ish.  If you want to have a long conversation with someone that you know well, that is what Skype is for. #TGFS**

Don't forget that a tweet is forever.  So, don't start a fight or say something hateful that you are going to regret later. Don't send something out as a tweet that you meant as a dm.  Even though you can delete your tweet, if it was that big of a screw up of a tweet, chances are, it's already been retweeted, repeatedly.  #thinkbeforeyoutweet


Are we following each other on twitter? @shellthings

Do you have any Twitter Don'ts to add to this list?


*I found out on twitter from @OhMariana yesterday that you can OPT OUT OF GETTING AUTO DMs! Or at least, quite a lot of them. Yes, this is news exciting enough to yell at you in caps. How to Opt Out of Auto DMs.

**I tweet celeb gossip links as part of my job about 5-10 times a day total. And hope it doesn't violate this rule.


***Thank God for Skype: credit to  @akludgymom for that hashtag