Twitter Don’ts

• Don’t be Boring and Don’t be Obnoxious – ‘Nuff said. However, what other people find to be boring and obnoxious will vary. Widely.
• Don’t be a Showoff – See previous. Always posting about how great you or your organization is can turn people off.
• Don’t use Poor Grammar or Spelling – Seems pretty obvious.
• Don’t Get too Personal – There’s a fine line here. Of course, we encourage you to Be a Person, but the minutia of your life is likely not that interesting to the majority of your followers. Be careful what you share.
• Don’t Forget that a Tweet is Forever – and Google is your permanent record. Watch what you say.
• Don’t Monopolize a Conversation – Just like IRL (In Real Life) those who talk all the time are tiresome and boring.
• Don’t Reply to Every Single Tweet You Receive – This point is similar to the preceding. Over-replying will make you look needy, over-anxious, and as if you are a tweetbot.
• Don’t Over-Tweet – Don’t tweet more than, say, ten times a day, or more than five times an hour. Try to find a balance between staying engaged and being obnoxious and spammy.
• Don’t Brag – about how many people follow you; about your Twitter rankings; about your Twitter milestones (This is my 1,000^th tweet!).
• Don’t Retweet without Giving Credit to the original Tweep – that makes you a tweetcreep.
• Don’t ask “Please Retweet” on All or Even a Majority of your Posts – Save this type of request only for important posts. It gets annoying otherwise.
  
• Don’t Ignore a Genuine Direct Message – Many people have automated replies to those who follow them or for other purposes. It’s OK to ignore or respond to these as you wish. But if someone sends you a pertinent DM, failing to acknowledge it can harm a budding relationship.
• Don’t Include Hashtags in Every Post – This can be seen as a pathetic bid for attention. However, including hashtags can expand your followers, so be judicious.
• Don’t be a Twitter-Stalker – While it can be perfectly appropriate to jump into the middle of a public conversation between two or more people on Twitter, jumping into the same person’s conversation constantly can get more than a little creepy.
• Don’t Take an Unfollow Personally – and don’t report on your Unfollows; Don’t announce who you’re Unfollowing; Don’t tweet your rules for following and Unfollowing; Don’t threaten to Unfollow your followers. Nobody cares.

There are lots and lots of free sites that provide tools for using Twitter. Here’s a very short list of useful Twitter applications that may interest you. There are many, many more out there. Just Google what you want to do with Twitter, and you’ll find some.

• Twitalyzer — analysis of your Twitter habits
• Future Tweets — schedule your Twitter posts
• Monitter — Twitter filtering, live streaming
• Tweetgrid — Like Monitter
• TweetBeep — free Twitter alerts by email
• Tweetizen — filter the daily influx of tweets