Rules 4 Twitter? Yes/No

Now you have a Twitter presence. You are learning your way around. 

I hope you begin to notice things about the living breathing real time community you have joined.

Isn't it exciting? 

Maybe you are still confused. 

There are still at least a dozen things you might not know. Everyone might agree there are rules to tweeting well. The confusion might begin at what exactly those rules are. 

Take the following dirty dozen list:

1.       Auto DMs

2.       Flooding Your Time line

3.       Following too many

4.       Following too few

5.       Auto posting from Facebook or elsewhere

6.       Never responding to @mentions or #FF's

7.       Ask to be retweeted

8.       Only tweeting about self

9.       RTing too often 

         10.      Saying nothing about self 

         11.      Never @mentioning others   

         12.      Not linking your website or other info in bio

Twitter allows you to set up an automatic welcome to any and everyone who follows you. 

These can be warm, welcoming and up lifting. They can also be controversial. Regular Twitter users find the time to be real and in the moment. They have begun to want the same from others.

There are extra programs you can use to help manage Twitter accounts and change the way you view the site or your personal time line. I think you can even get one program that lets you see various created lists. I tried one of the before but it was not a fit for me so I let it go.

To be seen and noticed on the site the conventional wisdom says you might want to send out three to six tweets at a time. They can be about random things, they do not have to be one message chopped up. 

Still these things add up and so you do not want people to get tired of reading what you have to say because it is all they can see on a page. 

You cannot control who follows you for the most part. How many people you follow on the other hand can say things about you. Some people follow everyone. Some people follow less than a dozen. A few hundred is best as a basic minimum.

If you learn to share about your life and pass on tidbits of good information you come across people will appreciate you. Next they will RT you, sending your tweets out to their followers. They will also respond to you. That is when you really know you are finally a well respected member of Twitter society. 

Things should feel like they are coming to you naturally by then. When I first joined I could not see the point in what is called Follow Friday. Filling your tweet box with the names of a dozen or so of the ID's of the people you love following. Hit send with the tag #FF if you have room. Others will be sharing their favorite Twitter connections too. 

Just today which is Monday as I schedule these posts for the week, I got a #MondayMention. Whoop Whoop. Gotta love being loved. Usually these kudos come from people you have RT'ed or other wise had positive communication with during the week. 

The above list is controversial because beloved tweeters usually do one or more of the things listed. We definitely have gone through phases and tried things. Perhaps that is half the reason certain activities end up on such a list. Still individual activities are usually not a huge set back. 

Individual users have their own pet peeves. Universally if you have great presence and content your faux pas against their better judgement will be forgiven.

A bonus no no: Never update your egg to a photo or an icon.