Many guides have been created to help Twitter beginners to maximize their experience and make it useful. Numerous social media experts weighted in with their dos and don’ts. Allow me to share my own impressions based on my use of Qwitter (the sneaky cousin of Twitter). For the last few weeks I’ve been using the service (not always reliable, I admit) to analyze social behavior of my quitting Tweeps. Here is my guide to How to lose friends and alienate people on Twitter:
- Follow only people you personally know. Why would you care about eating habits, pets and dates of the people you’ve never seen?
- Remove email alerts for new followers, direct messages and replies. You are a busy person, why would you want to reply someone on Twitter immediately? Didn’t they hear about 24 hours rule?
- Never use the @ key. If you have something to say to that person, tell them in email, on IM or even better – in person. You don’t need the entire world to know your response.
- Make sure all your tweets answer one simple question: What are you doing? Whoever doesn’t follow this rule, needs to check Twitter homepage again.
- Make sure to use all 140 characters, all the time. You want your followers to get as much info as possible.
- Tweet Good Morning and Good Night every day. That way your followers know you are fine.
- Always tweet your current location. It gives your followers an opportunity to make a surprise appearance and catch up in person.
- Tweet any new promotion/release/special offer your company might have. After all, social networks are all about providing value to others.
- Be straight about your political/social views. You don’t want followers that don’t share your opinions.
- Drunk-tweet once in a while. It will indicate to your followers you aren’t a robot.
Disclaimer: this post to be read with a pinch of sarcasm.
