They say, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Are we “of a feather…?”
I’ve been tweeting for a few years now.
I’ve been a social media manager for almost as long.
Over time, I have become aware of the twitter-sphere, and quietly kept my Twitter standards to myself. But in cleaning up my “virtual closet” over the weekend, it was loudly obvious…
There are a lot of “Twitty Tweeters” out there!
This is probably a good point to be clear that I’m a “quality over quantity” kinda girl. In all areas of life, that credo has served me well.
Even in social media — despite it’s slight contradiction of Paul Dunay‘s quote: “In the future, those individuals with the most Twitter followers, Facebook friends and fans, LinkedIn recommendations, etc. will get the big bucks.”
Yet, even in the race to accumulate connections…we still gotta behave.
So whether you are new or relatively unexperienced with Twitter, or if you are thinking of tweeting me up, it seemed only fair to give you my list of “Twitter Peeves.”
10 Reasons I Won’t Follow You On Twitter
1. Your picture image icon is one of the defaults provided by Twitter – I don’t want to follow an orange egg. I want to interact with a person. With all of the technology available today, there has got to be some image – of yourself or a cartoon – that you can upload to your Twitter profile.
2. Your profile includes no details about you – At somewhere near 150 million Twitter users we have to cut through the noise. Provide a basic sentence to describe whether you are a podcast enthusiast or like quilting on the weekends. Just some basic clue!
3. There are no tweets – Why would I want to follow someone that isn’t actually tweeting? I don’t care if you have 1 million followers. It’s about conversation. Have one.
4. All of your tweets are in a language irrelevant to me – If I can’t understand what you are saying, I can’t tweet back. And vice versa. So why connect? (This is more for others than myself, because I understand enough bits and pieces in other languages – in addition to English – to flutter a bi-lingual tweet now and then).
5. Your tweets are protected – Yes, we have to be safe. But social media is about dialogue…sharing. If you want me to share with you, you have to make it easy. If you’re so concerned that you need to protect your tweets, what are you doing on Twitter?
6. Your “follow to followed” ratio is unbalanced – I received a follow request from someone with over 50,000 followers – they were following about 50 people. They weren’t even a household name. Really? What is the value of entering into a social situation if you aren’t going to socialize and build relationships? Will you expect me to like and trust you enough to purchase something from you if you won’t even acknowledge me?
7. Your first and only tweet to me is an @mention including your affiliate link. Spammer, you!
8. Our interests are completely irrelevant to each other – If you like football and fishing, that’s terrific. But I don’t. We should all be searching for those that share at least one common interest. (Note: I’ll tolerate the football if you rock my world in other areas). 🙂
9. High broadcasted tweet volume – I’m talking more than 24 tweets a day with all marketed content & no conversational element. A lot of the time, these violators clump their tweets to hog the twitter stream. Unfollow!!
10. You send me an auto-follow direct message with a spammy link – In other words, “click my junk.” I LOVE it when I receive a greeting back from someone wishing me a great day, or a message hopeful of a fruitful connection….and NO link. I’ve heard social media consultants say the Direct Message is an opportunity. I agree. It’s an opportunity to encourage connection and offer value. Don’t sell there – I unfollow.
The bullet points above are direct. But mainly I’m a pretty friendly tweeter…
If you follow me, I’ll follow you back!
The image above is my Twitter mini-bio. If you follow me, you can also see:
- My follow to followed ratio.
- My lists – feel free to follow those too.
- What I tweet about.
Bottom line, we can all be friendly and get along fine by observing some basic Twitter etiquette.
Fellow tweeters, did I miss anything?
Touch any nerves?
Tell me about your “Twitter Peeves” in the comment box below! 🙂
