Although Twitter continues to grow and mature, many users still engage in some questionable practices when leveraging it. Targeted primarily to Twitter novices, this guide helps people maximize their ability to maintain a high signal/noise ratio and avoid making mistakes that can hurt their individual professional and/or organizational brands. More experienced Tweeters – including mavens – may want to consider the advice and reconsider some of their own assumptions and activities as well.
Why We Need to Focus on “Worst Practices”
Twitter is a great social media platform with diverse uses that can serve a wide variety of individuals and organizations. But there are certain practices that Twitter users engage in that many people find off-putting, and those practices have limited the extent to which folks – especially social media rookies – are willing to leverage it both personally and professionally.
I regularly interact with people who don’t “get” Twitter at all. They think it is a ridiculous waste of energy and that the people who use it are vapid, shallow, silly, immature, narcissistic, unprofessional egomaniacs with too much time on their hands and not enough “real” work to do. And believe it or not, there are still plenty of people who don’t even understand what Twitter is or how it works (if you happen to be one of those people, check out the Twitter Basics section of the Twitter Help Center for a “101” introduction).
It’s easy enough to dismiss “those people” as Digital Era Luddites, but they are much more representative of the general population than Twitter mavens are. Twitter may be approaching 500 million accounts (according to this article), but the number of active users is far lower than that, especially when you consider multiple accounts from both individual and organizational users. Given the nature of the platform, the potential users of Twitter could match or even succeed Facebook’s numbers (currently over 800 million globally), but not without significant changes in how it’s used. It has to become less noisy, shallow and unreliable if it’s going to appeal to a broader range of people. In other words, it’s going to have to become a little less cool and a lot more square as it evolves from “the next big thing” to a mainstream utility. Fortunately, we’re seeing the pendulum swing back toward the center from the “anything goes” mania of Twitter’s early years, and many of Twitter’s earliest adopters and most ardent users are recognizing the need to dial things back to a more manageable level.
It’s also worth noting that Twitter views itself as an information network rather than a social network. Many users, especially early adopters, still consider it a social tool, but the organization’s leaders have increasingly made it clear that emphasizing the information sharing potential of the platform is a key part of their strategic direction and an important element in their ongoing maturation (see this New York Times story to learn more).
Am I Talkin’ to You? Maybe…
In early 2011, just after Twitter celebrated its fifth b’anniversary (HT to heuristics marketing for that term), I published Unlucky 13? Twitter "Worst Practices" for Rookies (and Others) to Avoid, which was one of the most popular pieces I’ve written. Although much of the advice still holds, I thought I should update the original set of worst practices and add a couple more that had occurred to me since then.
As I was crafting the original list, I correctly anticipated that many Twitter mavens would vehemently disagree with my assertions and feverishly attest to all the benefits they’ve received from following what I characterize as worst practices. Neither that post nor this one is targeted to them. Though I think my conservative perspective is worth consideration by everyone, I generally exclude the following from my admonishments: news organizations, celebrities, BtoC commercial entities, higher education institutions, non-profit organizations, politicians, established bloggers and thought leaders, and any individual or organization with a large and successful Twitter presence.
This guide is targeted to Twitter novices who want to get started using the platform and engage in the most effective ways. It’s designed to help them avoid making mistakes that can hurt their individual professional and/or organizational brands, and to maximize their ability to maintain a high signal/noise ratio. It’s written from the perspective of rookie/casual users, who are likely to have a much more narrow view of acceptable behavior than active/ardent users.
The rules implied by these worst practices are not absolute, and as with most social media there’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution. As your experience and sophistication increase, you may decide it’s worth taking a few risks and experimenting with some of these practices, but – especially in the beginning – you won’t go wrong heeding my advice.
For additional advice on how to use Twitter more effectively
be sure to check out the Related Resources at the end of this post
What would you add to this list? Any other “worst practices” I might have missed? Other suggestions for Twitter rookies? Questions?
As always, I welcome your feedback.
Courtney Shelton Hunt
Updating the Original List…
The most obvious “worst practice” is to not “think before you tweet” – a mistake that people make regularly, even those who should know better (you have no doubt heard stories about the Cisco job candidate, Gilbert Gottfried and AFLAC, and the Chrysler Autos media rep, as well as countless journalists and sports figures). I want to focus on those that are less commonly known and/or agreed upon…
1. Assuming All Twitters Must Tweet. As with many other social media platforms, there’s a somewhat tyrannical assumption that “talking” is the only form of engagement. But honestly, if everyone is talking, who’s listening? Listening is a powerful form of engagement and should not be undervalued. Twitter offers fantastic opportunities to listen efficiently and effectively. It’s perfectly appropriate to open a Twitter account simply for the purpose of gathering news and information. You never have to send a single tweet.
2. Asserting that Twitter Engagement is the Only Way to Measure Success. A related notion is that individuals and organizations who actively tweet should (only) measure their success in terms of click throughs, responses, and RTs, which are measures of engagement. But…
- Social media measurement is an inexact science as best, and there are no existing tools that can capture all of the digital activity related to a specific tweet in a reliable fashion. For example, if someone follows a link to a blog post in a tweet then reshares it via his/her own Twitter account or another channel, that subsequent activity doesn’t get counted.
- The fact that someone doesn’t reshare an item doesn’t mean it wasn’t valuable or effective, especially if that person’s main purpose for being on Twitter is to listen.
3. Mistaking Quantity for Quality. You don’t need a gazillion followers to have a successful Twitter presence. Similarly, there’s little point in following a gazillion other Tweeters. And if/when you decide to use Twitter to communicate, you shouldn’t feel any pressure to push a high volume of messages out. Quality should always trump quantity when establishing your Twitter presence.
4. Playing the “Following” Game. For many people, the main (only?) objective in following other Tweeters is to get them to follow back. Not only is that self-serving, but automatically unfollowing people who don’t follow back is a waste of time and resources. You should follow Tweeters who provide high-quality content you need to meet your goals and objectives – and allow them to do the same. “Punishing” them by unfollowing them (which is often done automatically after a short period of time) is tacky, especially when you don’t give them time to review your profile/activity and make a decision about whether they want to follow you.
A related “rule” that has never made sense to me is that unbalanced following is wrong. More than once I’ve heard people get tongue-tied trying to assert this argument – wait, is it wrong to follow more people than follow you back, or vice versa? – which kind of demonstrates its inherent illogic. There is no hard and fast rule. Like most things, it depends on your goals and objectives. Do what makes the most sense for you and your organization.
Though I wouldn’t consider auto following (i.e., automatically following back anyone who follows you) a worst practice, I’m not sure it’s particularly effective. Again, it depends on the kind of Twitter account you’ve established and what your goals are.
5. Automatically (and/or Thoughtlessly) Linking Twitter to LinkedIn and Facebook. There are at least three reasons why automatically linking your Twitter account to LinkedIn and Facebook is a bad idea:
- The language and normative expectations on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are very different. As a result of the 140-character limitation, abbreviated terms and acronyms are generally acceptable in Tweets. The @ and # symbols have special meaning, as do RT and D – and in the context of Twitter they’re important. In LinkedIn and Facebook, however, Twitter conventions are clunky at best, and annoying at worst.
- The tolerance for a high volume of activity in Twitter is high, but it is less acceptable in Facebook and especially LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn is something of a starter social network for digital rookies. As they are trying to acclimate to new ways of communicating and connecting, they can be easily overwhelmed by more advanced forms of engagement like Twitter.
I felt so strongly about this issue that I wrote a follow-up piece entitled Twitter Cross-Posting To Linkedin: Stop The In-Spam-Ity!!!, which offers a more in-depth articulation of why this is a bad practice.
If you don’t tweet often (e.g., no more than once a day), and you don’t use too much Twitter jargon, it’s probably fine to cross-post your tweets, but as your engagement in Twitter increases, you should detach it from your other accounts. And remember: if someone wants to track your tweets, they can follow you on Twitter.
6. Poorly Worded Tweets. Twitter conventions come in handy when you only have 140 characters to convey your message. But if you have room, there’s no excuse for bad grammar, sloppy writing, and unnecessary shorthand and text speak. I’d also caution against unnecessary jargon, slang, crude and foul language, and inflammatory wording. And, as noted above, always “think before you tweet” – and if possible, get someone else to review a potentially sensitive tweet in advance.
Though they don’t particularly bother me, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the use of automatic tweets (e.g., thank you for following), which many Twitter advocates consider verboten due to their impersonal nature.
7. Cluster Tweeting. With tools like HootSuite and TweetDeck to help people manage their Twitter activity, there’s no reason to have large gaps in a Twitter stream followed by a clump of tweets. I can almost guarantee that none of the undifferentiated tweets in those clumps will be heeded. This is especially likely if a person’s tweets are automatically connected to their LinkedIn/Facebook accounts, where less frequent status updates are the norm. Obviously, you don’t want to schedule a tweet that’s supposed to appear spontaneous, but when you’re sharing content that’s not time sensitive, it’s in your best interests to queue it up.
8. Having Private Conversations in Public Spaces. Although it’s possible to create a secure/private Twitter account, it’s pretty unusual. Most accounts are public, which means most tweets are public. Users can send private messages to their followers by prefacing them with a “D” for “direct message,” but they have to “@” message anyone who does not follow them. The problem arises when people carry on personal exchanges via public messages. This is the Twitter equivalent of “cell yell,” forcing people to listen to conversations they’re not a part of and have no interest in. And if they don’t follow all of the parties in the conversation, they’re subjected to a stream of non-sequiturs and disjointed thoughts.
Occasionally sending an @ message to someone who doesn’t follow you is unavoidable, but when you have a reciprocal relationship you should use the D feature. And if there’s a group of people “chatting,” you should find another, more appropriate platform for your exchange.
9. Sharing Too Much (Personal) Information. In the early days, the whole point of Twitter was to share personal information (e.g., see this Twitter in Plain English video, which is now quaintly anachronistic). But now that there are more platforms for engaging and status updates are an element of virtually all of them, the unique value of Twitter to share “what we’re doing” has diminished. In addition, individuals who are using Twitter as part of their career management efforts need to think about how personal updates may negatively reflect their professional brands (remember, virtually all Twitter activity is public). You can reveal your personality via your tweets without unnecessarily revealing intimate personal details.
10. Tweeting Drivel. What constitutes drivel? Among other things:
- The banal aspects of your personal and/or professional life
- Aphorisms and other “quotable quotes”
- Unoriginal jokes
- News that’s no longer fresh (think of the old Saturday Night Live “update”: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead)
- Personal interests that aren’t relevant to most of your followers or related to your professional identity
11. Excessive Selling and Self-Promotion. Individuals and organizations should by all means leverage Twitter to promote their brand, but excessive “look at me” posts alienate people, as do too many “buy our stuff” tweets. Twitter’s value as a marketing channel depends on subtlety and respect.
12. Excessive (Re)tweeting. Although the activity tolerance in Twitter is quite high, even there it’s possible to overtweet. This is especially common with Tweeters who overshare personal information, tweet drivel, and have lots of personal exchanges via public tweets. What else adds to the noise? Ironically, excessive use of some of the things that used to be considered “best practices:”
- Repeat tweets (i.e., sharing the same tweet over several days)
- Follow Friday (#FF) lists
- Thanks for following, retweets, mentions, etc.
- Retweeting messages
Although retweeting is one of the best ways to share information and spread important news, if retweeting is the only way in which you engage, people will soon stop following you because of the lack of original content. Your tweets should offer unique value to your followers.
13. Indiscriminant Live Tweeting. In my original post I said that all live tweeting was ill advised, and I got a lot of valid pushback on that assertion. So I’ve modified my position as follows…
Many experienced Tweeters experimented with live tweeting in the early days and realized they ran the risk of creating too much noise, thereby alienating people who didn’t want to follow a specific event/news that closely. Even people who opt into tracking an event by following a hashtag can be overwhelmed by multiple tweets with the same basic message, as well as personal messages between individuals trying to connect or carrying on a side conversation through the back channel. There’s also the risk that speakers’ ideas will be misrepresented and/or that a Tweeter could share something in the heat of the moment he/she would later regret. Finally, people have also realized it can be distracting and even a bit rude to live tweet at an event.
I’ve seen all of the above happen. So as with other applications of Twitter, it’s wise to be judicious and respectful when live tweeting, and/or to consider more appropriate alternatives. For example, live blogging is a great way to create a focused stream on a specific event/story, because it allows people to opt in to the conversation and provides a more robust platform for in-depth sharing and discussion. Or, if you want to report/reflect on an event, write a blog post about it after you’ve had time to absorb the experience and can present your thoughts more carefully.
Adding Two More Worst Practices…
14. Making a Hash of Twitter Hashtags. After publishing the original Worst Practices post, I started noticing how often people misused and abused the Twitter hashtag, so I wrote 6 Tips to Avoid Making a Hash of Twitter Hashtags. This post provides a detailed description of the mistakes people make most often and offers specific guidance on how to avoid them.
15. Hideous Handles. Twitter is full of unprofessional, inappropriate, nonsensical, impossible-to-decipher, and too-long handles. When creating a handle, keep the following in mind:
- Twitter limits handles to 15 characters, and though it may be tempting to use all of them to convey an identity, shorter is better.
- Experiment with the right combination that creates an easy-to-remember and easy-to-find label (which is especially important for organizationally-oriented handles).
- Remember that although you can use CamelCase to differentiate aspects of your handle, Twitter is not case sensitive and all handles default to lowercase, so the string has to make sense in both formats.
- Be careful when using numbers, especially in combination with letters. 0 and O and 1, I, and l can be hard to differentiate, depending on the screen font people use.
If you’re unhappy with your current handle, you can easily change it without having to open a new account. Click here for detailed steps.
Next, Your Thoughts…
As I stated in the introduction, the practices above are not universally bad, and some of them have contributed significantly to the success of many established Twitter users. But individuals and organizations who want to maximize their appeal should think carefully before engaging in some of them when they’re just starting out or trying to expand their presence.
Twitter itself could help address the problems created by some of these practices by creating technology that would enable people to use Twitter in more sophisticated ways. For example, being able to tag and filter tweets (e.g., send me all of Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 tweets, but nothing else) could help address the oversharing problem. And having the ability to create groups of fellow Tweeters with whom you could interact privately could help people take group exchanges from a public space to a private one. This kind of functionality might exist someday, but until it’s developed it’s better to proceed with caution.
What would you add to this list? Any other “worst practices” I might have missed? Other suggestions for Twitter rookies? Questions?
As always, I welcome your feedback.
Twitter images courtesy of Hongkiat.com
Related Resources
Twitter for Rookies: Simple Guidance for Getting Started
Writing an EffectiveTweet
6 Tips to Avoid Making a Hash of Twitter Hashtags
To Hash or Not to Hash? A Decision Making Guide
Unlucky 13? Twitter "Worst Practices" for Rookies (and Others) to Avoid
(the original version of this post, which includes some valuable comments and additional resources)
Twitter Cross-Posting to LinkedIn: Stop the In-spam-ity!!!
Top Twitter Abbreviations You Need to Know
Finding the Tweets Per Day Sweet Spot, Part I
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