10 Twitter Pet Peeves – The Good, The Bad & Often Ugly

First of all DELETE your Twitter account – If you’ve been reading ChicsTech for a while, you remember the post we did on the Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Facebook. We talked about those Facebook users who post countless photos of their cat, gross details about what their eating or doing and posting 50 times a day in general. Unfortunately, some of these users are also getting Twitter accounts and their behavior on Twitter isn’t much better.

Granted, one of the greatest benefits to Twitter over Facebook is the 140 character limit but in addition to that, so many tweets are sent each day that tweets don’t stay in your “feed” for very long.

Even so, users are using and abusing the power of the tweet and we’ve compiled a list of our 10 biggest Twitter pet peeves. Do any of these apply to you? Step away from the computer, set down your phone and tweet with care and consideration.

1. The excessive @ tweeter. This is the person who has an @ sign in every tweet. Frankly, they’re just hoping for a re-tweet from someone with more followers than them. Hate to tell them but tweeting @ celebrities all the time isn’t necessarily going to help you grow your following.
2. The excessive retweeter. This is nearly the opposite of the first person as this person never creates original content. They just scour their feed and retweet anything they find interesting. What’s worse is that they never edit the tweet and add their own thoughts, they just retweet verbatim.
3. The “read my blog” tweeter. We all want people to read our blogs. But tweeting only links to your posts isn’t a good policy.
4. Too many abbreviations. Believe it or not, Oprah does this all the time. Her feed is full of u, r, 4, 2 and multiple other super strange abbreviations. Yeah, you only have 280 characters but plan your tweets accordingly.
5. A moving avatar image. This is so weird. It’s way too small to actually tell what you’re doing so just use a .jpg and call it good.
6. The complainer. When one tweet a day is a whine about something, you should probably not have a Twitter account. If you don’t have something interesting to tweet, don’t tweet anything at all.
7. Pointless profanity. There is so much needless profanity on Twitter. Way more it seems than on Facebook. Keep it clean the majority of the time and respect other Twitter users.
8.  No description of your account. At least say your first name in the short description of you on Twitter. While you don’t have to give away your street address, come on, tell people a little bit about what they can expect from your Twitter feed.
9. The moocher. Some people tweet for the single purpose of trying to get companies to give them free things. This goes along a little bit with number 6, the complainer, but tweeting @ companies all the time hoping for something in return is obnoxious.
10. The person who follows everyone. If you have 10 followers and are following 10,000, there might be a problem. Don’t follow everyone immediately after you join Twitter. Choose your follows carefully to keep some sort of balance between following and followers.

Some of you may have peeves on #hashtags, we don’t but open to your thoughts.  Just like with Facebook, be a respectful Twitter user. Of course, have fun with this social network but do unto others as you would want others to do unto you.

Note:  Literally everyday I get asked about Twitter as people understand Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest and even Snapchat.  However, Twitter seems to hard to grasp or understand.  Here is why Twitter is important.  First, Twitter is a newsfeed as people don’t go to websites any more they go to Twitter first and if they see an idea or headline they want to see or know more about they will then go to your website as most people do not think your website has all the news they want or need.  Second, Twitter is social media you can find and meet prospective clients and discuss business easily.  I am not suggesting you do as many do “thank for following me and here’s my sales pitch.”  I am suggesting like every other kind of business connection, you offer thought leadership first in the form of blog posts and great content – why your business is the best business to do business with.  Third, Twitter is fun, you can find interesting facts, topics and political pandering.  Fourth, most important Twitter is social media like a cocktail party you engage and have conversations with others not just toot your own horn.  Being nice will bring you more rewards than just being boastful.

One more time DELETE your Twitter account as its a terrible place to be and wastes your time.