Let me preface this by saying I am not one of those social media gurus. Those people drive me bonkers… probably because of their close relation to pushy sales people. I understand the need for them (in some cases) but mostly the insincerity and manipulation make me want to vomit.
Now that we’ve got that out the way, let’s get right into this shall we?
I love Twitter. Seriously love Twitter. I have met so many awesome people through that service. But the way some people use it make me want to scream in frustration, and sometimes I do.
1. Please for the love of my stream do not RT every post from the same person, no matter how epic/funny/clever/whatever you think it is. A few well-done RTs are great, but don’t flood your followers with it. If they wanted to follow said person, they would!
But… they don’t know about said person!!
2. Which brings us to #FollowFriday. This is not a chance for you to @ every. single. person. on your followers list. I can’t possibly sum it up better than this article by The Oatmeal.
In a nutshell: pick 1-3 people you follow and give them a #FollowFriday shout, perhaps with a little blurb about why I should follow them. Anything more is unnecessary and highly annoying.
3. Speaking of highly annoying. Let’s discuss the different between RT and @reply.
RT – This sends the message to all of your followers. Usually used to share a quote, picture, video, blog, whatever. It should NOT be used in the following manner to hold a conversation.
<obscure comment> RT @(7+ ppl) <even more obscure comment>
The above is EXTREMELY annoying and very likely to get you unfollowed. This is not to say that adding a comment is wrong, it can be used very effectively to increase humor:
<related comment> RT @(1person) <content that will be understood by more than one person>
If you’re holding a conversation please use the following method to reply to them:
@(person A) @(person B) @(whoever) <response>
In most cases only the people who you @ will see the response. An exception is made only in the case where all parties are followed by someone else, in which case they’ll have seen the whole conversation and it makes sense.
tl;dr = RT and @reply are different and SHOULD be used accordingly.
Originally I had intended to also cover Google+ tips but I think this is long and ranty enough for now… next week I’ll do the G+ thing. Please forgive my little rant – I just felt the need to put it out there lol.
It’s been a while since I have stopped in to read you blog. Was just catching up on the new things for you and popped onto this one. Nice to see that something still don’t change I guess…Still ranting on your twitter followers
It’s ok though, you did teach me a thing or two. And while I am still perhaps not worthy of your follow due to the high RT and group @ reply messages I make. I am still there, tweeting my own thoughts in the middle of them all.
Hope you are doing well and glad to see you are running too. ( I am up to a 13min mile now but that is pushing it for me, getting faster, getting stronger)
At the end of the day it really is to each their own. I’m not going to follow someone out of a sense of obligation if I don’t enjoy what they tweet. I don’t care about my numbers, or score, or reach or whatever. I network on Twitter the same way I network in real life, if the person isn’t interesting I don’t engage. I’ve been called elitist, mostly I’m ok with that if it means that I don’t have to put up with people that drive me batty.