10 Twitter DON’Ts

Now that you have a twitter account and are ready to start using it, you might want to know what not to do.  Use these guidelines as things to avoid — consider it Twitter-etiquette.

1. DO NOT use your twitter feed as a chat room — especially for conversations that are exclusive. Just because twitter gives you the ability to use the @username feature to direct a comment at a person, this shouldn’t be used constantly.

 2. DO NOT constantly use your twitter stream as a method of self promotion.  Twitter isn’t a tool to just boost your egos and your followers will not enjoy it.

 3. DO NOT follow a user just to get him/her to follow you and then unfollow immediately after they do. 

 4. DO NOT use a twitter account to send spam messages by direct messages.

 5. DO NOT use a twitter account only to stream blog posts. Twitter is personal and success is dependent upon human connections.

 6. DO NOT use unrelated hashtags to gain exposure for unrelated tweets. This isn’t a very ethical way to gain exposure.

 7. DO NOT mass follow everyone you can find in hopes to inflate your number of followers — especially if you’re just going to distribute a press release about your growth.

 8. DO NOT use twitter to repeat personal or confidential correspondence when you’re angry with a company or individual.

 9. DO NOT ask friends to retweet your tweets continually.

 10. DO NOT skip the step of setting up your profile with personal information.