Its always a weary thing when you give the majority of the general population a megaphone to the world. Not every tweet is gold, that is for certain. If having a good relationship with your followers is important to you, or if its important that your social media profile be in good ratings, you may want to think about your Twitter etiquette.
Not Retweeting or @ing When You Should
How do you feel when you recognize very shortly after you’ve tweeted or retweeted something that one of your followers has changed the retweet for their own to ensure their username and photo is attributed to anybody else wishing to talk or retweet about it?
Its just plain polite to give the kudos where kudos is due. If John found a great link and its obvious John is interested in the subject and posted about it, Jane shouldn’t opt out of Retweeting to remove the @ link back to John when she decides she is interested in the subject enough to pass it on too. Then it just looks like Jane takes the credit when John just wanted to be part of the Twitter Party and converse with some new followers about a mutual interest.
Same goes for posting links to other people’s blogs or websites, its a good practice to see if they also have a Twitter account that you can @ link to in your tweet. They will ALWAYS appreciate it!
Up For Debate – Refollowing
Tweeters are divided between whether or not the next point is either good or bad etiquette. Is it common courtesy to refollow every user who follows you? What do you think?
The Yes Thought
Take it as a compliment based on what you tweet about and what you put forth in your profile that other people want to follow you and read what you have to say.
Twitter is advertising and increasing your followship can only mean good things for your products, services or company.
The No Thought
I can’t control who chooses to follow me, much like I can’t control the little eggs that spam abbreviated links at us all day long. So, just because an outsourcing SEO company leeched onto a random post I made about Search Engine Optimization and followed me means that I have to in turn follow them and be subject to robotic posts about their global services?
The Happy Medium
Sign-up to receive emails whenever you gain a follower. This will send you a link to their photo, Twitter username and profile information. You can re-follow from there if you feel that based on first impressions you’d gain from following them as well. Or, you can opt to view their recent tweets and see for yourself.
If they haven’t posted in months, their profile photo is still an egg, their tweets are continuous abbreviated URLs (that you should NEVER click on), or if they don’t seem to have a human interaction on their social media are all reasons why you are completely allowed to not follow-back.
Don’t Tweet Every Waking Thought or Moment of the Day
When I see the same photo appear over and over again, enough that I have to swipe or scroll to make an effort to see what everybody else has to say, makes me want to unfollow them regardless if their posts are quality.
Advanced users know that they can create Twitter Lists and assign users to different lists and by viewing these categorized timelines and can streamline the type of tweets they receive on that page. But, you can’t expect every average user to sit there and do this with their accounts, especially when they follow over 1,000 users. Remember to remember everybody.
What Else Ya Got?
What other things do tweeters do that occasionally grinds your gears? What do you think about the great Refollow Debate? Comment below!