The Ultimate Twitter-Etiquette Guide

Twitter Do’s and Don’ts 

Aaaah, Twitter! How else would we know what the Dalai Lama really thinks or what Richard Branson had for dinner or if Rashida Jones apologized to John Travolta for asking him to come out of the cupboard. Even Barack Obama is tweeting again and thereby joining the crowd of more than 100 million persons, companies and organizations who use the world’s most famous Microblogging service.

The whole Twitter-Etiquette in just five points! This sounds great, don’t you think?

1. The Twitter Self-Presentation

Your Twitter Account is your digital business card. The possibilities for your electronic self-presentation concentrate on 3 things:

Your Photo

Recommendable is a pic that shows you clearly and ideally gives a hint of your personality. Don’t try, come hell or high water, to be funny or original and don’t change your pic too often as this might give the impression that you are too ambitious or trying too hard. And I personally would refrain from wearing sunglasses... the eyes are the mirror of the soul, right?

Your Bio

Use your real name; there are already too many anonymous weirdoes online. In case your name is already taken because your are really famous or your name is John Smith, adjoin a short and unique addition. The old Greek proverb “keep it simple, stupid” is also has validity for the characterization of your persona.

Your Background

There is nothing to say against the classic Twitter background but if you want to stand apart try and customize your own! It just takes a few minutes and tutorials can be found all over the web. Or you could have a look here

2. Twitter-Courtesy

Social obligations always result out of the individual circumstances and the contiguousness to your acquaintance and the sum of these two quasi results in a Courtesy-Quotient - The new forms of interactive involvement on social networks of the virtual society have by far the lowest courtesy-quotient. This is also valid for Twitter and at the same time is a blessing and a course. For you this basically means that if somebody you don’t know contacts you about something you’re not even remotely interested in, you don’t have to answer him/her/it….. cool, isn’t it?

3. Twitter-Arithmetic

Never before it was so easy to precisely calculate the social rank of a person as now in the age of Twitter. After joining, just for a millisecond, we are all the same. After that, every individual will be valued by the conjunction of the following variables (Warning mate, don’t take this too serious):

Tweets (t) = the number of your own micro-messages with maximum 140 characters

Following (f) = the number of Twitter-Users who you are following

Followers (F) = the number of Twitter-Users who are following You

Only t and f can be directly influenced

This results in the following formula

t << F ==> prominent
t ≥ f ≈ F ==> in the Media or PR-Business
t >> f >> F ==> thirsty for glory or just plain narcissistic

4. The Twitter-Psychology

Well, it’s a known fact that we live in difficult times and many people out there feel already valorized if they receive a virtual fondle. But to brag about the number of followers on Twitter is equally  pathetic and awkward as to swank about your eBay-feedback-score or at least as measly as to crawl the search engines on how to tweet to get more followers… The best method to get more followers is still: GET A LIVE, PLEASE!

Twitter is, similar to Amazon’s “you might also like…”, giving you suggestions. Only on Twitter they are (mostly) not about products but about people. But never ever forget: Twitter is – despite of the hype – just a machine. So please don’t fall in despair if you mostly find profiles on the „Similar to you“-Page that you are absolutely not interest in or even fill you with a slight sense of disgust. But here’s a quick advice guys: If this keeps happening you probably should change something – On Twitter and in Real Life.

5. The Twitter-Taboos

Let’s face it: 140 Characters are enough for every banality. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to take part in the dumb-game. Tweet regularly, but no trash! And if you really feel the need to tweet trivialities, the at least do it in a witty way.

Be careful - Tweeting is no traditional small talk; the rules are a bit different. Even some “celebrities” had to learn this the hard way, here’s a short list, just for fun:

Russell Brand made the awful mistake of tweeting a photo of his ex-wife Katy Perry - with no makeup on. Yikes! He said it was an innocent mistake and that he never intended to publish to his Twitter account - followed by millions. Was this the real reason why the marriage failed?

Charlie Sheen made the ultimate Twitter mistake of direct messaging his mobile number to Justin Bieber - only for it to end up on his timeline. It was no surprise that Charlie's phone was ringing off the hook for days afterwards.

Piers Morgan: Remember the famous gagging order that prevented anyone from saying which 'high profile footballer' was having an affair? Well Piers Morgan ignored that rule, and revealed the man in question was Ryan Giggs. Oops! But we all knew anyway, didn't we?

Despite Sarah Palin’s frequent use of Twitter to fire off missives, Palin isn't as tech savvy as you think — or so she says. After she “favorited “ a photo tweeted by Ann Coulter that showed a church sign calling President Obama a "Taliban Muslim," Palin blamed it on the Blackberry. "I've never purposefully 'favorited' any tweet," Palin said afterward. "I had to go back to my BlackBerry to even see if such a function was possible. I was travelling to Alaska that day ... it was an obvious accidental 'favoriting.'" Anyone want to refudiate this?

Basically it is pretty simple: What doesn’t belong in public doesn’t belong on Twitter - Keep in mind that while the technologies are relatively new, the reactions to breaches in etiquette are still pretty much old-school.

Well, that concludes the 5 points of our twitter etiquette. Liked it? Tweet it! Didn’t like it? Tweet it as well!