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Proper Twitter Etiquette, What is it?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on April 3rd, 2008 11:52 AM

Twitter LogoRecently I’ve been hearing a lot of people talking about Twitter and whether it is the ultimate tool for communication or if it has been abused by ruthless self-promoters (I’m definitely not one of those ;) ). A few months ago while using Twitter I started noticing that people were promoting their blog posts via the site. I decided to join in on the fun and now see the benefits of notifying people of new posts.

I have heard other people say that this automated model of self-promotion is unacceptable and that it is simply cluttering their Twitter stream. For myself, I feel as though posting blog posts is a relatively uneventful twitter update and really doesn’t cross the threshold of continuous self promotion that we are beginning to witness on the site. As I’ve been reiterating for the past two days, the social web is most effective for building brand you.

The techniques used to build brand you could be to simply write a blog post once a day or alternatively to write each post and tell as many people about it as possible in the hope that they’ll tell their friends. I myself have leveraged a number of guerrilla social web marketing practices and so have a number of other people that I know of. Just ask Jesse Thomas how to market yourself and he’ll give you 500 ways to drive traffic to your site.

So the question remains, what is proper Twitter etiquette? Where’s the line when promoting yourself? Are there any rules? Perhaps out of this discussion we can create a guide to Twitter etiquette.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 11:52 am and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 18 Comments

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    I would also say that twittering a blog post in the normal stream is not a big deal, as long as that is not your only contribution to twitter. I think many, like yourself and me for instance, have a great flowing converstaion with the people we follow and that an occasional tweet to promote a blog would be no big deal. I would say that many would argue that simply a twitter stream of ads for your blog would not eb the best twitter etiquette.
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    If you Auto-Tweet the title of the blog post along w/ the tinyurl, that would be better...but simply posting "New Blog Post" w/ the link...I don't know who clicks on those.

    But dear Lord, please turn off the Flickr Auto-Tweet feature! (I'm looking at you Chris Abraham!)
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    A good place to start is with the 10 commandments

    http://twitter.com/tencommandments
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    All Twitter rules are subjective to the person who makes them and will only really apply to that person. Everyone uses the tool differently. Here are some of my rules:

    1) Auto-posting new blog posts to twitter via the Wordpress My Tweets plugin is an essential method for me to keep my friends up to date on what i'm doing. I encourage everyone to do so. It's definitely okay.

    2) Promoting events your sponsoring, organizing etc. are cool. People want and need to know this stuff.

    3 Following 1000s of people just to get follow backs is SPAM. It's not okay. It sucks.
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    people aren't forced to follow people. un-follow people who annoy you. There's nothing wrong with anything.

    On that note... if it changes your facebook status all day, and all day every day your status is one of the 3 that's visible to your friends, you can guarantee you've had a negative effect on their image of you
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    There are two things that are my pet peeves about Twitter and should be added to the Twitter Etiquette Handbook:

    First, is people who purposely follow hardly anyone (or no one like Tim Ferris does) and then brag about how many followers they have. Twitter is a conversation tool and to think that others should listen to you without you giving them the courtesy of listening back...rude.

    Second, is when people tell other people what they should and should not tweet about it. If you don't like it, just unfollow them, but leave them to their own devices.
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    first off, don't ASK people to follow you. You are either interesting or you aren't. I screen all new followers for a day or so to see if they are worth following/interesting enough to converse with.
    Second: don't pimp your products constantly.
    third: respond to threads, create your own ideas too
    fourth: try to contribute at least 10% of what you consume.
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    I agree with Peter C. I have been followed by two people (damiano, I am looking at you)and I never, ever post to twitter. I only use it to follow people I like. Why would they follow? They are clearly looking for follow backs, they are clearly spammers.
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    I Personally believe the auto blog post feature (along with some other auto features) should be disabled, Twitter is more powerful as a referral system, not as powerful as a self referral system. There are some people that I enjoy following that use this feature, however it is wearing thin and soon I will choose just to un-follow and direct my attention in other areas.

    In the long term it does more harm that good. It adds more and more noise to the once powerful signal. Sure if you are in it for the moment, perhaps it is something to utilize. If you are trying to establish a large base that follows you wherever you go (ala Ze Frank, Merlin Mann, Garyvee and others) then I would advise against it.
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    If I check my Twitter homepage and someone's avatar is there staring me in the face on more than 50% of the page, I automatically un-follow them. Period. Seems to work well at toning down the noise.

    Me, I think people should limit themselves to 5-10 posts a day. We'd all be a lot happier, and their posts would be more valuable.

    Also, if someone follows me that has 2x more overall tweets than me, I don't follow back because I know they're going to be one of those 50-percenters.

    twitter.com/povertyjetset
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    I'm of the opinion that we can only determine the "rules" or etiquette for ourselves - and the most powerful tool we have to create our space in social networking is the follow/unfollow tool.

    For me, I love when my friends post links to their new blog posts - because I'm not a feed-reader and I like to know. But if that's ALL you do with Twitter? I'm probably not following you.

    Use Twitter howsoever best suits you - and those who agree will follow - those who do not always have the power not to follow.
    :)
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    @Doug, I partially agree with what you are saying. Chris Brogan seems to think that if you ask a question followed by a link that it is acceptable but if you just say "New Blog Post" it isn't as effective. If 5% of your tweets are about a new blog post, I don't think it is completely unacceptable.

    Ultimately all of these things are subject to personal tasted. I have had easily 50 people un-follow me due to the volume of my tweets or the promotion but 700+ followers are fine with it. I think there's definitely a trade off.
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    Tweeting as "myself," I am pretty careful about what I put. It seems that most of my Tweets are "@"s in response to other things; dialog, conversation. If I originate something, I try to make it worth commenting on, at least in theory...and something I'm ok having on Facebook. Guess I think that the listening, for me, is more interesting than the talking?

    Tweeting for business (I am @ribbit) I am there to learn and listen. I try to find people related to our dev community (Flex, Flash, Ruby, anyone interested in voice, VoIP, Android, iPhone...we're an open platform for voice as object in Web apps) and engage in conversations about our direction, our company, what we're working on, cool things that happen. We're early-stage, but over time I could see announcing updates to our dev platform, new releases from our dev community, things happening in our store...stuff of real value. We will also continue to ask questions...so far, our followers have been really cool about answering.

    It hits me that this Twit world is a lot like the "real" world. Talking to yourself is kinda crazy. Having a conversation is kinda awesome. Maybe if it's not good enough to get a response, most of the time it's not worth saying?

    Deep thoughts (not), but just what hit me.
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    What happens if those 50 were the power users that follow you, and now you are just left with spam, self promoters and other people that really don't utilize the true power? Twitter whores if you will. We have all seen them, they follow 2000 people but generally no one follows them. Is it then a viable solution/choice? Eventually that is what it will come down to. As more and more people start use the system as a forced life stream instead of a casual life stream, more and more noise will result.

    There are some really scary things coming out of the local tracker I have running. One post being submitted by 5 different usernames (for example). The great thing about it is I do have the choice to un-follow, and I don't. In the end, the people that provide viable content will last and retain followers, however the public stream will become as polluted as the Potomac.
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    @Doug, I definitely don't think that's (twitter spammers) a viable choice. Following 2,000 people for no reason won't work. What you are calling twitter "whores" are really Twitter spammers. They simply have no idea how to build a community and real relationships with other people.

    You need to be "real" and you need to be part of the conversation. Ultimately, "New Blog Post: XYZ" is not a great conversation starter but if I posted it with a question, I think it would be acceptable.

    The real question is if there is any effectiveness in twitter spam. If there is, then I think we will see more spam. I don't consider what I'm doing necessarily spam but as I just said, "New Blog Post:" probably isn't the best way to do it.

    None of the people reading this blog are typically the spammers that you speak of. I think there is a big distinction between the self-promoters and Twitter spammers though.

    In regular marketing don't a lot promotions end up pissing a few people off? Is that really a horrendous thing?
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    I like the 10 commandments approach - although I'd boil it down to "Do unto others as you have done unto yourself" - and of course the beauty is that if you don't dig what you're getting from individuals - then un-follow or block - like will tend to go with like and everybody's happy - yeah - I'm an optimist!
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    @brian, great point - "try to contribute at least 10% of what you consume."
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    The market will determine what is Twitter etiquette. If you post crap, people will start to un-follow (particularly as Twitter gains more users).

    Can you deliver value through status updates/Tweets (see http://www.jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/o...


    As for my approach, when someone starts to follow me, I look at his/her profile and last few tweets...if it is what I am looking for, i'll sign up, but I also prune the network to reduce noise.

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