Twitter Etiquette

Here's a handy list of Twitter best practices that I use in designing social media programs for my clients.

Re-Tweet
It’s the equivalent of email forwarding. Your followers can benefit from the content, and others outside your network will want to learn who you are.

Grow Your Network
Follow people talking about your market, especially the experts, and they'll follow you back.

Respond to Messages
Click on your Twitter ID to see who's talking to or about you.

Avoid Direct Messages
It's OK to send some DMs once in a while, but a lot of spammers DM people all the time, so use these with caution.

Monitor Your Name, Brand and Keywords
Use the search feature to find out who's talking about you and your products.

Tweet Often (But Not Too Often)
Avoid constant Tweeting, which can be annoying. Three times a day works for most people. Monitor your followers and if you notice too many people are leaving you, you're probably tweeting too much (or your tweets are boring or not interesting).

Invite People to Follow You
Add a link to "Follow Me on Twitter" to your blog, website, business cards and email signature.

Contests, Content, Events and Specials
My four favorite kinds of content to tweet about are contests, events, content (article, videos, resources) and specials.

Share Other People's Content
Most people tweet about their own content. This is not a good idea. When you find stuff you like, tweet it.

Balance Following/Followers
If you follow a lot people and very few people follow you, you'll be seen as a spammer. If a lot of people follow you and you don't follow them back, it's not very nice of you. Use FlashTweet (http://flashtweet.com/) or FriendOrFollow (http://friendorfollow.com/) to balance your ratio.

Help Others
See what your followers need and try to give it to them. A lot of people use Twitter to ask questions; answer them.

Use Hash Tags with Caution
A hash tag is a keyword preceded by the pound sign. Used right, hash tags can be very beneficial, but if you use them to stuff your tweets with keywords, people won't like it.