Comments on: Ten Brutal Twitter Tips

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:51:09 +0000

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.

By: Astrid Illum

Astrid Illum — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:00:48 +0000

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?

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:34:53 +0000

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.

By: Silvia Maria

Silvia Maria — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:29:30 +0000

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!

By: Jennifer Greiner

Jennifer Greiner — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:59:58 +0000

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

By: Jeremy B. Shapiro (ForeclosuresMass.com)

Jeremy B. Shapiro (ForeclosuresMass.com) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:07:02 +0000

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

By: photo_journ

photo_journ — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:28:31 +0000

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.

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:00:40 +0000

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.

By: Mari Smith

Mari Smith — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:42:57 +0000

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

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:05:35 +0000

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.