Twitter Etiquette

May 24, 2010

I don’t know about anyone else, but I think this is something that needs to be addressed; especially given that this has become a HUGE platform for bloggers to promote their blogs by tweeting when a new blog has been posted on their website. It’s an awesome tool– when used appropriately.

To be more specific, it’s a great tool to use, to say, “Hey, guess what I blogged, come check it out!” But is there such thing as overuse? I believe so. Posting once that you’ve updated is great. I see the tweet and decide at that point as to whether or not I want to check it out; sometimes I do, other times I don’t. It really just depends. If the title is eye catching enough then in all likelihood I will take a gander, but if it’s a topic that something along the lines of “Long Time No Blog” or “Lazy” etc, then I’ll probably pass it up, because while I do enjoy reading about some people’s life to a certain extent, there has to be a grab factor for me. Make it humorous, heartbreaking, or something (did I mention sex sales?), but if it’s just about your day to day activities, well quite frankly I don’t really give a damn and chances are no does other (I just happen to have the balls to say it.)

In any event, when I talk about twitter etiquette and abuse, I’m talking about the people who tweet that they have a new blog post multiple times through out the day, when hello, we got your tweet the first time. The more you spam, the faster I’ll be at not only ignoring your blog post, your blog, and you, but also un-following you because you just don’t get it. So not only have you sacrificed your blog viewership but you’ve also managed to lose a follower– not a good move in the blogging world. Not a good move at all. And last but definitely not least in my book of twitter etiquette lands squarely on paid blog posts, which admittedly I do. However, I also have the decency to realize that my readers may not actually want to be informed of such posts, so to save them the agony of visiting my blog thinking I have a new, awesome post (because come on, all my posts are awesome), I do not tweet about, nor do I send out e-mails to my subscribers about these posts because I understand just how irritating it is to think you’re reading a post about something relevant and then out of no where get hit with a link. It’s like really, what the fuck? Nice way to blindside me. So out of courtesy for the few readers I have, I avoid the following:

• Tweeting multiple times about a blog post to try and get comments because no one has commented yet. Give it time, sheesh!
• Tweeting about sponsored posts. Come on do readers really want to read those? Do you?

So perhaps (assuming you’re guilty of the above), you should too.*

*Feel free to share other twitter etiquette suggestions– not that I really care, but hey, others might.