Another feed-clogger spamming me with their useless and repetitive URL’s that bring me to 10 windows with exponential popups. Say goodbye to annoyingtweeter7!
If you’ve started using Twitter, you’ll find out swiftly that following certain people doesn’t always turn out to be advantageous to you. That’s why they invented the “unfollow button” (seen below).
This may get you thinking, “Am I a Twitter jerk, too?” Well, before you go committing Twitter hari kari… think about how you use it.
Ask yourself:
“Do I tweet incessantly?”
“Do my followers retweet my stuff?”
If you answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second, you’ve got some thinking to do; mainly about etiquette and intrigue. It’s OK to be a heavy user (for personal or business), but remember that there’s a distinct line between following and being followed. Here are 5 actions that will turn you into a Twitter jerk faster than you can say “#newtwitter sucks!“…
- Having a Poor Follower / Followed By RatioCheck out the amount of people you follow and how many followers you have. Is the scale tipped in favor of those you follow? Though this may go unnoticed to you, it may not to others. They’re going to ask, “Why does this person have 17 followers but follows 839?” This golden ratio may turn your reputation into a spammer and turn off potential followers. Be careful.
- Feed Clogging (it’s for the birds)Hey megaphone! Don’t tweet everything that pops into your head. If your followers start seeing tweet after tweet about your upcoming trip to Comic Con, guess what… you’re going to lose a few folks.
- Becoming Carlos Mencia with TweetsA grand way to fulfill your Twitter jerk status is to bite off of other people’s tweets (like Carlos Mencia with jokes). The retweet feature (RT) is there for a reason. It’s great to like other’s contributions, but give credit by mentioning them if you’re going to share it with your followers.
- URL and Hashtag VomitWant to share that YouTube video with the URL which contains 28,000 characters? Tighten it up! Free services like TinyURL and Bit.ly will help you not look like such a n00b… because let’s face it… no one wants to be a n00b.Hashtags (#hashtags) are ways to share common interests and related tweets. Just use these sparingly. The general habit is to find a trend you like and tweet every 20 seconds. #slowdowntiger
- Having a Potty MouthJust like any other social network, anything you say can and will be held against you… in a court of Robocop. Keep your tweets intriguing, professional yet relaxed, innovative and friendly.
Twitter is a great way to share concise and interesting messages with massive amounts of people. Don’t abuse your power and become the smelly kid on the playground. Avoid the five jerk-moves and you’ll have more followers than @ladygaga before you know it. Well… probably not… but at least you won’t be Carlos Mencia.