Guest Blog Series -3 Twitter Etiquette

Good Morning! Today we continue in our series from the Lexical Linguist, (http://lexicallinguist.wordpress.com) Tanya Coyle, about using social media to develop your Personal Learning Network. The screen is yours, Tanya!

Today I want to give you some suggestions on etiquette for Twitter. Basically anything that is rude in the real world is probably rude on Twitter. However, I have summarized several things that are more specific to Twitter and may be less obvious. Some of this list has more to do with being rude to yourself than just to others. Also, not all tips are absolutes, only guiding principles so that you’re tweeting with thought and care.

Have a real picture and a brief profile outlining who you are or what you do

Reality Check: Meeting someone at a party and not introducing yourself or smiling

It is rude to have no profile picture or description for several reasons:

• It says you don’t care enough to find a pic of something that helps your network get a sense of you and spend a minute uploading it.
• It causes everyone in your network to be super vigilant whenever they see an egg in case it might be you (if they care enough to bother – they’ll probably just miss a lot of tweets if they follow you at all).
• It may cause someone in your network to accidentally click a spam link in a moment of weakness because they thought it was from you.
• It forces people to do extra research into who you might be before choosing to accept you to follow their tweets or deciding to follow you. That’s if they are bothered doing the research at all – most will just not follow you back.

Always credit other people’s ideas

Reality Check: Telling a coworker you found a great resource or had a great idea that was actually your other coworker’s resource/idea.

When you RT someone, it’s OK to truncate their tweet a bit to make it fit the 140 character rule, but be sure you give credit where it’s due. You can either RT them directly or rewrite the info and add ‘via@tweetname’ at the end of your tweet. It’s also best to credit an online source even if you didn’t get it from Twitter, especially if that source has a twitter account (e.g. newsmedia, bloggers, etc). At the very least, include the link to the info you’re tweeting about when appropriate/possible.

Thank ppl for RTing you

Reality Check: not thanking someone for a compliment or recommendation

I think the reason is obvious but the follow through can get tricky, as it’s not always clear-cut and easy to find all the RTs of your tweets that exist. If someone is using a Twitter client instead of the web, especially mobile phone clients, they don’t always let Twitter know and Twitter can’t let you know in turn. The quickest place to find RTs is to go to the web and click ‘your tweets retweeted’ or http://twitter.com/#retweeted_of_mine. If you are using TweetDeck or a similar client, be sure in your settings that ‘don’t show duplicated tweets’ clicked or you often won’t see past the first person to RT you. Finally, I sometimes find RTs I missed by searching for “RT @SLPTanya” in the search field on Twitter Web. Your Tweets Retweeted is still the best way to see them, unfortunately. Just make every effort.

Also thank people for giving you a shout out or a Follow Friday recommendation.

Respond to ppl who tweet you

Reality Check: Ignoring someone speaking directly to you

This falls under the ‘engage in your network’ advice from my tips on building your network. If someone sends you a directed tweet (e.g. they started their tweet with your @Name) or a Direct Message, you should make every effort to respond to them in some way. You should do this even once you have a lot of followers. One of the most fantastic things about Twitter is that it makes other people more accessible, be they celebrities, companies, or regular folks. Really amazing Twitter gurus who have thousands of followers are defined by responding to as many directed messages and tweets as humanly possible. Will you miss people? Sometimes, but it’s the effort that counts. A simple will often suffice (if a specific answer was not required).

Promote people in your network, not just yourself

Reality Check: Only talking about yourself or your interests and telling everyone how awesome you are

It’s fine to use Twitter to promote your blog, company, and so on, but if you spend all your time promoting yourself, you can get very boring and come off as a ‘bot’. If you spend time promoting others in your network with RTs, shout outs, Follow Friday (#FF) recommendations and so on, you more actively engage in your PLN and come off as an interested and interesting person to connect with.

Don’t take it personally if someone doesn’t follow you back

Reality Check: Are you genuinely interested in everything everyone else is Tweeting?

Everyone has different ways of following people, and not everyone monitors who’s following them at any given moment (I certainly don’t). If someone doesn’t follow you back, it’s not personal. Give them reasons to notice you and follow you back by RTing them and engaging them with comments on their tweets. Similarly, don’t take it personally if someone stops following you. In fact, sometimes Twitter has accidentally caused my account to unfollow people I’ve been following happily for a long time. And sometimes people stop following someone else for a short time (e.g. if you’re at a conference or tweeting about a topic they are no longer interested in).

Along the same lines, I don’t suggest you blindly follow back anyone who follows you. You should develop your PLN tailored to your specific interests and needs. Don’t feel you have to follow everyone and don’t feel that everyone should be interested in your interests.

Don’t tweet excessively or with too many tweets in a row.

Reality Check: hogging the conversation

If you regularly post multiple tweets in a row in order to tell a story to all of your followers, consider a blog; it’s a much better format for sharing stories and complex ideas. Likewise, space out information tweets because the same peril may befall you for tweeting many different links in a short time period. People will often skip over your tweets if you do this too often, and then they may miss it when you have something really important or interesting to share or a question they may have been able to answer. I know many people get unfollowed for tweeting excessively because you clog up their twitter feed.

NOTE: I’m adding this post hoc due to some confusion – I don’t mean getting online and responding to multiple people suddenly, I mean posting to ALL your followers EXCESSIVELY in a short period of time (or all day long, as some tweeters do outside of the SLPeeps).

Don’t RT a link you haven’t checked out yourself

Reality Check: recommending a book you’ve never read or an idea you don’t know anything about

It may be broken or otherwise in error. Also, it may not represent your views and then you are, in essence, endorsing it to others. Don’t rely on the caption with the link in someone else’s tweet because it may lead you to think it’s about something it’s not.

Remember that Twitter is Public

Reality Check: acting inappropriately in public

Don’t tweet anything that can get you fired, get you arrested, upset your mother, or otherwise paint you in a negative light to future/current people in your life. Also, swearing on Twitter is a bit like yelling profanities in a public place. Along with the previous tip, I would posit that it’s rude to yourself to potentially damage your reputation because you fell prey to the ‘anonymity of the internet’. This is obvious if you are tweeting professionally but also make a careful decision about what you say even if using Twitter personally. You never know who will see your tweets (even if they are ‘protected’)!

Keep within the 140 character limit

Reality Check: talking for a long time at already long meetings

The best thing about Twitter is its 140 character limit. It does pose a problem occasionally, but if everyone began posting longer tweets, it would be impossible to keep up with the information flow. Also, it’s rude to force your followers to constantly click ‘read more’ to finish your tweets.

If someone poses a question or comment directly to you and you are responding, it’s more acceptable to go over the 140 limit because it can be assumed that that person is motivated to click ‘read more’. It may even be more polite to any followers who follow you both than to respond in 5 or 6 tweets that clog up their timeline.

Use “reply” to keep a string of convo

Reality Check: blurting out commentary to a friend without cluing them into the topic

If you comment on someone else’s tweet, always click the ‘reply’ button. Not only does it save you time by filling in their name automatically, it saves them time and energy trying to figure out what specific tweet you are commenting on. At the very least, include info about referring comment (e.g. re: Frazier protocol convo).

Describe info in links you tweet

Reality Check: lending someone a book with no cover or title page

If you post a link, always include some description of that link so people know if they want to read more, save it to favorites to read later, or just move on. If you tweet ONLY the link, it’s impossible for them to make that decision (and they’ll probably choose not to bother).

Use punctuation for clarity

Reality Check: stringing along all your words in one giant monotone sentence for listeners to parse

I think the reality check says it all. Please use some punctuation (even if we short form words to death) to ensure clarity whenever possible. You know who you are.

Don’t just take my word for it, here are some other references:

14 ways to use Twitter politely

Informal Twitter Etiquette Guide

Guest Blog Series- 2- More about Twitter

This is the second entry from our series featuring Tanya Coyle, The Lexical Linguist.

There are some things you can do in order to get into Twitter and start using it to its fullest potential. I have listed my top 10 tips to get the most out of your experience. Some of these tips speak to gaining followers, but I want to be clear that you should never get caught up in how many people follow you. Twitter should not be a competition for followers for several reasons, but the biggest is that WHO is in your network is much more valuable than HOW MANY are in your network. Having more people following you is helpful because it gives you access to more connections, information, and makes crowd sourcing (i.e. posing a question to your community in the attempt to get multiple responses) much easier. However, you get more bang for your buck connecting with people in your profession who will stimulate and challenge you. Besides, just because someone has many followers, doesn’t mean that those followers aren’t spam or random people who don’t contribute to the community.

Have a real picture (called an avatar)

This picture doesn’t have to be of you, per se, although it is very helpful. The picture should, however, convey some sense of you to your followers. Please, please, PLEASE never leave the Twitter default egg as your avatar. You come off looking like spam or worse (not that there’s much worse than spam). I also consider it poor Twitter etiquette because you require your followers to be more vigilant about whether or not you are spam when you contribute to discussions. If you want to get more followers, ditch the egg.

Say something in your profile and give us a real name

This is especially important if you are using Twitter professionally in any capacity. I would say that lack of information in the ‘profile’ section is the number one reason I won’t follow people. Mainly, it’s because I don’t know if you’re worth following if I don’t know what you do or who you are. A brief description (e.g. ‘grad student in audiology’ or ‘SLP working in schools’) helps people to know who you are and why they should bother following you. I also suggest you include at least a general location such as province/state and country. It’s also nice if you can include your real first name (last name is more optional) so that people have a ‘real’ name to attach to you beyond your twitter handle.

Create a short, user- friendly handle

When you create your Twitter name, or handle, you should consider that people will hopefully be using it a lot. The best possible handle is your real name (e.g. @LNLeigh) or your first or last name with your job title (e.g. @SLPTanya). Please avoid long names when possible because your name takes away characters when people include it in tweets. Also, avoid strange characters like underscore or symbols at all costs – it is less user-friendly to type. Your handle, picture, and profile can work together to give people a flavor for yourself on Twitter (called branding). Give this some thought when setting them up. If you already have a Twitter handle and would like to change it, this is easily done. As an aside: if you are a speech therapist/pathologist, please avoid the word ‘speech’ in your handle – this has been flooded in our ‘market’.

Start tweeting

If you want to get into the game and start connecting with people you MUST start tweeting. Even if you have no followers and feel you are ‘talking to yourself’ you should be tweeting. Tweet relevant material such as links you found interesting and professional ideas or experiences you may have had. Before I follow someone, I usually check their previous tweets to see if they are ‘worth following’. A ready-made community such as the SLPeeps does allow for some leeway but signing up on the SLPeeps and Audiologists Twitter List will not automatically get you plugged into the community. At the time of writing this blog post, the audiologists do not yet have a centralized hashtag (that I can find) such as #SLPeeps to help create a cohesive community so it may be more difficult to plug yourself into that network without relevant tweets.

Retweet (RT) people

The BEST way to get people to notice you and to begin participating in the community is to retweet someone else. I frequently become aware of a new person worth following because they RTed me. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll be followed, but it certainly helps show your willingness to join the community. As I’ve said in a previous post, retweeting is very important to Twitter and RTing someone demonstrates to them that you are genuinely interested in their ideas and information, so much so that you feel it’s worth sharing again via RT.

Jump in on conversations (politely)

Twitter is a public forum so treat it like a party or giant convention room and join in on conversations at leisure. It’s not considered ‘rude’ to jump into a conversation, so long as you’re on topic and contributing to the conversation. You may want to start your first tweet with “butting in” to acknowledge you’re joining the conversation if you rarely tweet with the other tweeters, more as an introduction that you’ve joined. It’s also OK to just throw a link or resource that’s on-topic into the conversation and walk away again, although it’s better if you converse a little or acknowledge any tweets in response to your contribution. It is rude to bud into a conversation thread to plug your company, blog or similar in a random way, especially if you aren’t contributing to the conversation.

Tweet more than blog or company promotional tweets.

It’s just not helpful to the community and in a social network, while networking is important, so is the social aspect. This means there must be give and take or sharing involved. If you are using Twitter SOLELY as a professional outlet for your company and your handle, profile, and picture proclaim this as such, it’s potentially OK. This is because people know what to expect when they follow you. However, I still urge you to participate in related discussions and provide tweets that go beyond promoting your company. @CASLPA is a great example of a ‘company Twitter account’ who also engages the related community. CASLPA is a professional organization that uses social media to maximize potential to connect with their members (and even their non-members). It’s the ‘social’ or relationship part that makes them so great at what they are doing on twitter.

Use hashtags to get noticed by people who aren’t following you

If someone is following a specific hashtag (e.g. #SLPeeps, #hearing, #slpchat, #audiology) they will see all tweets that include that hashtag (unless the person tweeting has protected their tweets). The #SLPeeps hashtag is probably the primary reason that SLPs on Twitter have been able to come together, grow, and create a very cohesive community. I often find people worth following because they tweeted with the #SLPeeps tag. Also, using tags appropriate to your conversation makes it easier to crowd source for information before you’ve amassed very many followers. You can add #SLPeeps to your tweet, for instance, and anyone following the #SLPeeps tweets will see your tweet as well, even if they aren’t following you.

Be unprotected (at least at the start)

Again, I can’t emphasize how important it is to keep your tweets public in order to develop your PLN. Many people won’t bother trying to follow you if your tweets are protected because they cannot see examples of what you’re tweeting. Also, it’s a hassle to request to follow and then ‘wait and see’ to add you to a list they may have created to make following certain types of groups easier (more on lists another time). Protecting your tweets may have its place, but when growing a PLN it is a hindrance rather than a help.

Engage with your network

People who contribute meaningfully to the community get followed. It’s as simple as that. This means put out tweets, join in on conversations, pose questions to your community and respond to tweets that mention you or are directed at you. Even when you have many people following you it’s best to make every effort to respond to people if they direct information or a question at you specifically. You need to be contributing to your PLN in order to grow it and gain value from it.

Don’t just take my word for it. Here are some other sources if you want to see more:

Follow Fail: Top 10 reasons I won’t follow you in return on Twitter

20 Twitter Tips for New and Experienced Tweeters