One of the things I find fascinating is the twitter revolution. Everyone is Tweeting, even Bill Gates has joined the movement! There are people who tweet that do not even have a website.

For the Blogger, Twitter is a must! It is a vital Social Media Link to the world. Like most people, I just jumped in and started to tweet. Bad Idea! A follow Blogger had a post on his site that he had been banned from Twitter for Spamming. I knew this blogger, not well, but well enough to know that he was not a really “hard sell” type of personalty.
After his explanation as to what had happened, he provided a link to the “Twitter Rules”. I thought I would cruise on over there and take a look. I’ve been “Google Slapped”, in the past, I didn’t really relish a “Twitter Slap”.

I thought I would go over a few common sense approaches to managing your Twitter account.

Tweeting

• Have some common courtesy here! Don’t flame anyone for any reason.
• You can carry on short conversations on Twitter; please do this. Twitter is watching you in real time. This is what the owners of Twitter envisioned on how their software would be used.
• Don’t hyperlink all your tweets. Twitter warns you about this in their rules.
• When you tweet, for the sake of tweeting, be very, very cool! When I run hyperlinks to my blog, I get visits to my blog and followers to Twitter. When I randomly tweet, I sometimes mention things like the weather, or the latest news or what the president is doing today. I’ve notice that I get a ton of “Un-followers” when I do this. However Twitter wants you to use their software in this way, so be cool! Talking to others on Twitter is the safe way to go here and it meets Twitters TOS. No one really wants to know what you had for lunch anyway.
• Watch your hyperlinks, try to use the entire URL, avoid the “tiny URL”. Search Engines don’t like the “tiny URL’s”. There is no hard and fast rule here, so just use some common sense.

Twitter Followers

• Don’t pay to get Twitter Followers!!! Grab a mitt and get in the game, will ya! Find your own followers not someone else’s.
• Don’t follow everyone who follows you! You will hit your market quicker if you stay with people that have similar interests.
• Don’t follow anyone who does not Tweet! There’s no reason to! You know, those Twitter Accounts that have 4000 followers and they have never sent out the first Tweet.
• Don’t follow too many people in one hour’s time. Twitter sees you as a potential Spammer if you start following 100 people every hour during the day!
• Work to keep your own Twitter following in line. In other words, keep the ratio of followers and people you follow about the same.
• Be on the look-out for Auto-Twitter Software used by someone else. If you suddenly see someone following you, go to their Twitter site first; and if you see that they have not been active with their Twitter account for 90 days, then they are using Auto Software to find you! Don’t follow back, there is no reason to, if they aren’t active. These people usually don’t even have a website or if they do, they are usually trying to sell you some cheesy product! That is not what the spirit of Twitter is all about!

Automated Twitter

• Don’t pay for or use auto software. I use Hootsuite, but I use it manually. And I usually send out tweets like once or twice an hour.
• Don’t sign-up for any bulk follow services, those services that promise 100 followers just to sign-up and 100 a week after that. I got popped doing this myself. Once I got my 100 followers, the service started to spam my account and Twitter step-in and changed my password. I got the message!!! Don’t do that!!!
• Using auto software to tweet every five minutes, or worse, to tweet a dozen times every five minutes is begging to get your account suspended! Please don’t ruin it for the rest of us! Plus, even if you have a killer blog, I can’t think of a quicker way to compel people to “Un-follow” you! Remember this, if you see anyone who is “spitting” out auto tweets at an unreasonable rate, send them a direct message and politely explain that your having trouble keeping up with all the information they are supplying. You don’t have to have a hard edge. As a last resort you can always “Un-follow”, that way you and I can control the flow of information, and Twitter Management won’t have to step in and take action!