Twitter has been around long enough that its users have generated a substantial body of conventional wisdom on the topic of Twitter etiquette. In fact, a Google search shows that there may be as many as two links to Twitter etiquette content for every actual Twitter member (nine million etiquette links for its four million users). An embarrassment of riches to be sure.
Yet within this wealth of good ideas lurks a tendency toward a parochial tone that, at least for this amateur Twitter user, reminds one of a schoolmarm with ruler in hand, ready to strike at the first infraction. So, in the interest of providing a small amount of balance to the universe, I hereby meekly present my Contrarian View Of Twitter Etiquette.
[1] Its OK to just follow others without feeling the need to tweet X times a day or meet an artificial volume expectation.
There are over four million Twitter users and guess what – there will be variation in the volume of monthly tweets for a group that large. Just as with any other personal or professional group activity, people will naturally play different roles. Some will be very visible leaders, either because of prior fame or the slow organic growth of their following based on hard work and great content. Many users will focus on volume, while others will focus on quality, and a few like Robert Scoble will seemingly be able to generate quality content across twenty social media channels without the need for sleep. The vast majority of us will be lurkers of a sort, carefully selecting those we want to follow, benefiting from the conversation, and jumping in only when we feel we have something to say. This is the natural order of things.
While it is true that we look to Twitter and other social media tools to generate interaction and build social connections, an expectation that every Twitter user should tweet X times per day is just silliness, yet one sees this expectation repeated all the time.
Let’s do the math: A semi-popular Twitter user (but exponentially more popular than this author) has 2,000 followers and may follow a similar number (using another etiquette rule). If he tweets 20 times per day, and all those he follows suddenly decide to do the same, he will be sifting through forty-thousand tweets a day. Is this really desired? No of course not, especially since this new expectation will likely create a sharp drop-off in the quality of the stream.
If you are in the enviable position of being a leader of a quality conversation and community on Twitter, just relax in your role in the group and stop scolding everyone else for not achieving the same level.
[2] You CAN use Twitter to broadcast only new blog posts, like an RSS feed.
A great example of this behavior is Andrew Sullivan, who has one of the most popular political blogs on the web, and yet only tweets links to his new posts. You won’t be hearing about Sullivan’s breakfast on Twitter, yet many follow him to track his posts, just like an RSS feed, eliminating the need for a separate feed reader. I for one am glad he doesn’t tweet about his breakfast at the expense of writing quality content for me to enjoy on his blog. I suspect that many other authors/bloggers feel the same way as Sullivan, yet this is considered verboten behavior by many of the schoolmarms.
It is interesting that some have been declaring RSS dead because of Twitter, while at the same time this complaint about people using Twitter as an RSS replacement is made. Huh? Finally, a recent GigaOM article says that an RSS subscriber may be worth a lot more than a Twitter follower anyway.
[3] Each company has the right to determine its own strategy for Twitter and social media use, and hundreds of creative uses are yet to be defined.
There is a great deal of ridicule on the web for organizations that are currently using Twitter in a limited fashion, or purely as a broadcast medium. Some would even suggest that using Twitter in a limited way is worse than not using it at all. Yet more silliness.
There are over one million businesses in the U.S. with at least 10 employees, and only a small fraction of them are currently using Twitter. Shouldn’t we give credit to those that are dipping their toe in the water, and a little time to figure out what will work best for their organization?
In the coming months we will see thousands of organizations joining in, with activities ranging from monitoring the stream (Virgin America, Comcast, etc) for customer service issues to the collective intelligence of Best Buy’s Twelpforce, to applications so creative we will be wishing we had thought of it first. Yet some claim that all the best practices for Twitter use in business are already known. If that was the case, what would become of all those freshly-minted social media experts?
[4] Don’t RT links to content that you haven’t actually read yourself.
Just stop it. Your followers are relying on you to filter content for them, and that filtering mechanism may be one of the reasons they followed you in the first place – they value your opinion. Your followers have an expectation that you have read the linked article and recommend it, disagree with it, find it interesting or perhaps controversial.
If one’s goal in life is to become a Twitter version of a signal repeater, automatically RT’ing anything that hits you, there are probably services that can automate that process. Twitter certainly includes an aspect of promoting other’s work, but if all one is doing is blindly RT’ing incoming links that haven’t even been visited, the value of those RTs quickly approaches zero, much like the prop books on the shelf of a pretentious neighbor who only reads The National Enquirer but wants to appear well-read at parties.
What is the value of a Twitter RT link, and how does it compare to a link mention within a blog? Incorporating a link into a blog post is usually a sign that the author has read the content and found it worthwhile, or an interesting take on the topic at hand. If I value Chris Brogan’s work and link to his recent Twitter etiquette post, is that link worth more than a Twitter RT, or less? If the in-post link comes from a popular blogger (again, not this author) wouldn’t that link be worth thousands of individual RTs from a signal repeater?
[5] Don’t announce every time another user RT’s you, back in your own Twitter stream.
The first hundred times I saw this occurring I wondered if it was a new Twitter feature I had missed, and perhaps there is a Twitter start-up out there providing this valuable service. Announcing every time someone else RT’s you back in your own Twitter stream is a lot like Sally Field during the 1985 Oscars when she exclaimed:
“You like me… You really like me!”
Just saying.
Which contrarian Twitter rules would you add to this list?
Your comments are welcome. If this post was helpful, you might like to subscribe to the RSS feed, sign up for weekly updates via email or follow me on Twitter.