Sciencetext Tips & Tricks

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Ten Brutal Twitter Tips

February 12th, 2009 · by David Bradley >> 29 Comments

twitter-buttonYeah, I know…more twitter…but I thought it was time to be brutally honest about getting the most out of twitter, so here are my brutal twitter tips:

First, please fill in your bio, please add a link to a representative place on the web, if you don’t I won’t tend to follow you back as other than your tweets I’ll have no way of really knowing who you are (unless I actually know you, of course)

Second, please don’t use an avatar/photo showing more than one person, otherwise how are we to know which one is you?

Third, please make sure your avatar/photo is not accidentally out of focus, it looks silly. If you’re making an artistic statement fair enough.

Fourth, say what you think, when you fancy saying it, but please don’t make all your tweets single-word replies to other tweeps, otherwise, again we won’t be able to gauge whether to follow you.

Fifth, if you must autofollow when someone chooses to follow you please don’t use an autoresponse service to ask me to visit your site. If I’m going following you I will have checked out your site already. See first item.

Sixth, build up some presence on twitter before following people you really don’t know. If you’re following hundreds of people and only have 3 followers, I ain’t coming along for the ride. Join forces with your real friends on twitter first and build up a posse organically.

Seventh, please use direct messaging (DM) for simple replies that will be meaningless to anyone else without them viewing the conversation history. Alternatively, add a spot of explanation and we may catch your drift.

Eighth, if you’re retweeting (RT) my tweets and please feel free to do so, don’t feel obliged to use my exact tweet, add your thoughts and just make sure the link is the same and you include “@sciencebase RT ” without the quotes at the start of tweet.

Ninth, don’t forget the @ sign in front of sciencebase, i.e. @sciencebase, if you want to catch my attention. Using “David Bradley” or any permutations thereof will not show up in my @Replies list

Tenth, if you’re replying put the @sciencebase, or whatever user, at the front of the message, if it’s at the end of in the middle it won’t necessarily show up in my @Replies. The username will show up in a search, but that entails an extra search step.

Here are a couple of additional thoughts from fellow scientist blogger Angsuman Chakraborty, who is @angsuman on twitter. He suggests trying http://twitter.grader.com/search as a great way to find like-minded people on twitter. He also added the key twitip, which I’ve mentioned here before and to friends – Engage people by answering their questions, be helpful when you can, build your reputation in your domain of expertise. Engaging people makes other note you and they want to hear more from you.

29 responses so far ↓

  • Phil Bradley // Feb 12, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Perfect! Couldn’t have put it better myself. Other than changing David to Phil, obviously! ;)

  • Ruth Seeley // Feb 12, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    David, to amplify what I said to you in the direct message I just sent via Twitter, unfollowing people just because they don’t follow you is a rather draconian measure and one I don’t think makes a lot of sense.

    Follow folks who add value – folks who think you add value will follow you. My follow:following ratio is pretty close to 1:1, but there’s probably no more than a 50 per cent overlap between who I follow and who follows me. And that’s just fine.

    The mistake a lot of mainstream media are making on Twitter is that they are treating it like a broadcast outlet. Perhaps they’re not used to hearing people shout back at the television or the radio station – but if they continue to take a broadcast approach rather than an ‘engage’ approach, they’re not going to benefit from social media in any meaningful way.

  • David Bradley // Feb 13, 2009 at 8:49 am

    Thanks for commenting Ruth, I don’t think I ever said I was removing all the non-mutuals. What I did do was subscribe to RSS feeds for those who don’t converse at all (like newsbots) and retained links with those who are interesting. I’ve written a post that will appear later today on Sciencetext about all this and, of course, it will be tweeted too. Watch out for it, the title is Tweep Sweep.

  • Jo // Feb 17, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Oh this is good! I must have missed your tweet about this but found it by randomly clicking on something else.

    Now I find myself wanting to tweet this and realise I need to tinyurl or is.gd it for miniaturisation purposes – any chance you could pre-bitly / pre-tinyurl your posts (perhaps a tad cheeky but I’m trying it nonetheless!) and then those who want to post it find something very convenient to copy and paste into their tweets (also for some of these URL shortening things it means you can track their movements around the web I believe).

    There’s a link structure that allows you to mailto someone with an included subject* – which you can then edit to suit before sending. Is there a similar “Tweet this post” thing that is already out there? I am showing my ignorance here ;-)

    *a href=mailto:blah @ blah.com?Subject=blah is what I’m thinking of (HTMLed into a button)

    Jo
    P.S. Generally I prefer @ replies than DMs as, unless it’s secret, others can follow the conversation. But obviously DM if it’s private chatter, of course.

  • David Bradley // Feb 17, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    For my regular blog posts, I use twitterfeed to feed them to twitter, it should automatically make the links bit.ly and yes you can track traffic with bit.ly simply add a + to the end of any bit.ly URL and it shows you the traffic and sources.

  • ModernPainter // Feb 18, 2009 at 4:09 am

    I think open conversations are fine and fun if they don’t go on forever, but when a one word answer might do, it’s better to add some context in for other readers or they won’t know what you’re talking about.

  • Anne // Feb 18, 2009 at 4:36 am

    Very well said and I agree 100% – people get tied up so much with #s, I will follow those who I find interesting and am hoping that my followers are doing the same.

  • sam king // Feb 18, 2009 at 4:38 am

    Bravo. Especially #7. I hate reading people’s tweet feeds that are 90% replies. It’s like hearing a bunch of punchlines with no buildups.

  • Mathew Carley // Feb 18, 2009 at 5:01 am

    Hi David,

    Would you also agree that several of these suggestions would be useful on any and all social networks? I can’t think how many times I’ve been “friended” by someone in a picture with 3,5,10 other people or someone with practically no profile! (They always get ignored, but I still feel a twinge of guilt – what if they’re new to the network?)

  • Andy Beard // Feb 18, 2009 at 5:05 am

    For retweets, you have to put the RT first, otherwise Twitter will count it as a reply, and many people have Twitter set to not see replies you send to others.

    Most twitter clients will pick up your @ in the middle of a tweet – for the web use the Powertwitter plugin for Firefox.

  • Mari Smith // Feb 18, 2009 at 7:42 am

    Excellent post, David!!! I’m with you on all these – ’specially #4. I think the single word tweet peeps don’t realize each tweet is an individual indexable web page or how much they clutter up the tweet stream. I like to give thought to every tweet, even a short thank you note.

    Btw, here are a few great resources for managing Twitter better – @easytweets or @tweetlater for prescheduling; @tweetbeep (or @tweetlater) for keyword alerts (just like Google alerts but for tweets). Also, http://twellow.com is excellent for finding good relevant peeps to follow.

    Cheers,
    @marismith

  • Brenda MacIntyre // Feb 18, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    RT @RobertMiddleton: Some more common sense Twitter tips you should know: http://is.gd/jV5I <–Excellent!

  • Jo // Feb 18, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    Ah, no – what I meant was to suggest that you add to the end of your posts (especially the Twitter ones) a pre-made shortened URL that people (who wanted to post it to somewhere where URL length matters) could use that link instead of the full length one in the address bar. Gives you a bit more work though…

    As it happens when I tweeted it yesterday Twitter automatically shortened it (it does this inconsistently, I think it depends whereabouts the URL is in the message) anyway. The random TinyURL that I created was http://tinyurl.com/atdo8x but if I’d copied and pasted one from your page it would be that bit more trackable.

    The alternative would have been for me to find your original tweet about this page and copy the link from that (or retweet), which is more effort for me ;-)

    (Also I’ve switched off @replies other than those to and from people I’m following so I do miss some of the chatter unless I look at someone’s profile).

    Jo
    P.S. Have you had a play with TinyChat.com yet? It’s IRC without the downloads – basic but good for real-time chat. I think it could be useful for live blogging conferences and whatnot.

  • photo_journ // Feb 18, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    I think I’ll tweet this blog. Excellent points.

    While some seem to think it’s about quantity, I prefer quality tweets over quantity any day. I feel under no obligation to follow someone who happens to think I’m interesting enough to follow if I see they haven’t a profile or one that I think will not be interesting in following.

    The tweeters that are tweeting straight commercial self promotions and sales material quickly get deleted too.

  • Bradley Will // Feb 18, 2009 at 6:01 pm

    Brutal Twitter tips http://adjix.com/4n97

  • Jeremy B. Shapiro // Feb 18, 2009 at 6:04 pm

    Commenting On: “Ten Brutal Twitter Tips” ( http://tinyurl.com/atdo8x )

  • Jeremy B. Shapiro (ForeclosuresMass.com) // Feb 19, 2009 at 1:07 am

    It’s about time someone reminded folks of these basic (and not so brutal!) tips for Twitter. I managed to get my top 4 reasons for not following someone in a tweet and caused some controversy. :)
    http://twitter.com/JeremyShapiro/status/1200994879

  • Vijay Anand // Feb 20, 2009 at 3:55 am

    @IamSB I sincerely follow the seventh rule of the Ten Brutal Twitter Tips. DM for Simple replies. http://tinyurl.com/atdo8x

  • Startups LIVE TV // Feb 20, 2009 at 11:52 am

    @sciencebase Ten Brutal Twitter Tips – great article for newbies on Twitter. http://ow.ly/nss

  • David Bradley // Feb 20, 2009 at 3:01 pm

    Thanks to everyone who did the RT on my brutal twitter tips post – http://bit.ly/brutal – apologies if not enough gore for some ;-)

  • Rajeev Edmonds // Feb 21, 2009 at 12:10 am

    Ten Brutal Twitter Tips http://is.gd/jV5I

  • Jennifer Greiner // Mar 2, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    I enjoyed reading your TWITIPs. Learning more each and every day. Thanks

  • David Bradley // Apr 2, 2009 at 8:58 am

    @Pistachio For TFD, my ten brutal twitter tips http://tr.im/i9dV

  • David Bradley // Jul 10, 2009 at 12:36 am

    @djproctor Never meant to chastise ;-) You can take or leave my brutal twitter tips, they’re just my personal twitiquette http://tr.im/rGzr

  • Silvia Maria // Aug 27, 2009 at 5:29 pm

    I found this blog through a crazy RT I could not quite understand. I only did so because I like and trust that person enough to lead me to something worthy. It did.

    Asa person new to Twitter, I am learning as I go and making mistakes accordingly. But much is common sense. Still, it feels a bit like high school at times where the “cool” people twitter each other and ignore anyone deemed twitterly dee or twitterly dumb.

    I like the suggestion of establishing yourself by twitting with friends first. But honestly, that defeats the purpose for me which is to meet new people and learn new things. Besides the fact that most of my friends are glued to FaceBook which was hard enough for most of them to figure out.

    So today was a good day. I followed a link I did not understand to a place that explains a lot and I learned a few things.

    Thanks!

  • David Bradley // Aug 27, 2009 at 6:34 pm

    Many thanks Silvia, glad the post was useful. It’s not strict rules, you can adopt, adapt, or ignore as you see fit…just ideas by which I very loosely tweet. By the way, please leave a comment with your twitter ID if you wish. I followed you just now, follow me back and we can DM.

  • Astrid Illum // Nov 17, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    I too have followed the weird internet trails to this post just now – belatedly.

    I understand most of your points, but I’m baffled at your idea of ‘building posse’ before following people you do not know. I guess it is different perceptions of Twitter at play.

    I can see that there is rarely reason to follow someone, who has few if any followers and few if any tweets. But why on earth shouldn’t they follow whomever they please?

    Treating Twitter solely as a broadcasting platform might be wrong if you are a producer (or if not wrong then arrogant and misunderstood) – but as a receiver, how can it be wrong to follow any and all?

    To me at least, there doesn’t seem to be any downside to the dissemination of good ideas and interesting news through silent followers?

  • David Bradley // Nov 17, 2009 at 8:51 pm

    Fair enough Astrid. These aren’t laws, they’re just tips. I still think that simply following hundreds of Twitter followers before you’ve built up a small following of your own can be problematic for some users as it can resemble the behavior of spammers.

  • twittes // Dec 16, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    Ten Brutal Twitter Tips: Sin Descripción http://bit.ly/5DADYm

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