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Shameless Twitter: Community Standards

As more and more people use Twitter for promotions the community begins to set standards for behavior. This comes about through a commonality of experience. Once of the concepts of social networks is that they are inherently self monitoring. People want to be in communities where they belong, where they are accepted. That community sets its own standard of conduct based off of community values and behavioral experience. Inside of Twitters micro-verses you will find very specific rules of engagement that you will become familiar with as you involve yourself with the community.  However, Twitter as a macro-community has some of its own rules of engagement.

Some things we hate:

  • Calling someone out on unfollowing you, not cool. Not to mention that they will not likely want to follow you after you announced to the world that you unfollowed them.
  • Forcing people to “validate” themselves by using a captcha before you will let them follow you.
  • Auto DMs. Seriously why are you still doing this? We know they are automated and we are definitely not going to click your link.
  • Eggs – not the nice farm eggs in your fridge, but the arm of eggs that are following you. If you are a real person on Twitter then have a real profile pic.
  • “Please RT” – stop begging for retweets. If your content is good people will retweet it.
  • Asking for more followers. No one cares that you are almost at 8000 followers. Stop asking for people to pander your Twitter account to their friends. That is what #FF is for.
  • Its Wednesday, why are you doing a #FF? It means “Follow Friday” ….so do it on Friday!
  • Uncredited tweets. If you are posting something that someone else wrote, don’t play it off as yours. Give the person a h/t (hat tip) or some kind of credit.
  • Altering trending hashtags to make them sound cool. Some people do this for #FollowFriday, or #FF. You will see alternatives like #FriendlyFriday or #FavFriday. Don’t do this. #FF is a trend for a reason, when you alter a trending hashtag, you are no longer searchable in the trend, and therefore are not participating in it.
  • Pretending to be the Twitter account of someone else. You will be called out on this. No one likes impersonators, unless they are actual comedians!

These are just a few, there are more. Tell me what are some that you know?