25 Hard Learnt Twitter Survival Lessons: Dos and Don’ts!

What are the best Twitter practices an active tweep can carry out to make the best out of his/her overall Twitter usage? How can you gain the trust and retweets of other tweeps? And what are the things that you should avoid doing when you’re using Twitter?

After 2 months of continuously using Twitter, and after reaching 5,000 followers, for which I am very grateful, I decided to share my Twitter experience and squeeze what I learned into 25 pieces of advice that every Twitter tweep could benefit from in his/her search for the ultimate Twitter experience!

The List of To Dos:

1. Say your thanks: As prayers are important in life, “thank you” mentions are as  important on Twitter!
2. Send out love and smiles: You might think it’s lame, but gathering a group of people who bring  a smile to your face, through their tweets, and sending them a smile every once in a while makes a huge difference.
3. Greet Your Fellow Tweeps: – with “good morning” and “good night” messages as often as you can, let people feel that you do care to greet them and not just advertise to them! JohnLusher is a great example of caring tweeps.
   

   Greet Your Tweeps!

4. Personalize! Try to make your #FollowFriday‘s and other similar recommendations more personalized!
5. Be Creative! Why stick to the traditional already available hash tags and follow recommendations? Create your own! Example: #saturdaynightfever and “fine pple to follow = helpers fun – re-tweeters + more DO follow” recommendations.
   

   Be Creative!

6. Give Compliments: When you read a good tweet, give time to compliment the tweep who posted it, retweeting is not always enough.
7. Open links before retweeting them: You don’t want to end up advertising spam or “less than useful” sites or content.
8. Trust Follow Recommendations - but always check tweep profiles before adding them.
9. Use #FollowHim and #FollowHer Properly: Personalize the recommendation tweet and say why you think this tweep is worth following, and maybe even give a brief bio about him/her.
10. Mix Up Your Tweets and Retweets: Try to tweet and retweet a variety of topics and issues, regardless of your main reason for being on Twitter. Example: If you’re an artist and using Twitter to promote your paintings, it is still essential to tweet about recent news issues, marketing related topics and so on.
11. Add Your Touch! When retweeting, when possible, trying adding a small comment, opinion or even a smiley to show that you sincerely care for the tweep who posted it.
12. Converse: As often as possible, answer proposed questions and ask some yourself. You’d be surprised how tweeps enjoy and appreciate that two-way more personalized approach.
13. Be Useful: Share links about valuable information you stumble upon online. TrendTracker is one of my favorite tweeps providing useful and interesting links to all.
    

    Be Useful!

14. “Retweet others As You Like to be Retweeted”: If you enjoy tweeps retweeting your blog posts or the links and quotes you tweet, do the same for them in return!
    

    "Retweet Others As You Like to be Retweeted"

15. Play Nice: If you’d like someone to retweet your post or add you on their LinkedIn network or Facebook friends, ask them politely otherwise they will ignore your request.
16. Be Subtle: You added someone to your list of followers, what’s the next step? Retweet them to let them know you are following them. Don’t be too obvious by telling them: “Hey, I’m following you, follow me back!”
17. Follow Active Tweeps: Tweeps with big followers’ numbers are not always available to follow your tweets and proactively engage with you in useful or valuable conversations. Find those who tweet and retweet often about a variety of issues and follow them.
18. Take Caution: Not every one is interested in having a thousand followers per day! Some actually like to slowly yet surely build their follower base depending on how active, sincere and informative they are.

The List of “No No’s!”

1. Do Not Send Spam Links: You may be tempted to send links that promote your area of expertise but if they seem like spam, don’t send them. Trust me, they get you unfollowed.
2. Do Not Depend on Automatic Tweets: Tweet later and automatic tweets are much less time consuming but impersonal and annoying!
   

   Do Not Depend on Automatic Tweets

3. Do Not Send Spam or Generic Direct Messages: They make tweeps regret following you and might consider unfollowing you as well.
4. Do Not Flatter Yourself: Regardless of the number of followers you have, try to be humble and care about what others say and think. You will never know it all!
5. Do Not Give Up: You tweeted many links or quotes and no one retweeted you? Don’t give up! Tweeps will eventually find and retweet you tweets if they are funny, interesting or informative.
6. Do Not Ramble! Yes, we are really glad to hear that you are “having coffee” or “going to the gym” every now and then but please keep the details of your “intimate” daily routines to yourself!
7. Do Not Over Do It: Market your product, service or idea wisely. Don’t push people away by repeating the same tweets over and over again to get noticed!

Finally, I really hope you will benefit from my humble experience and I’d really appreciate it if you can add more advice and tips from your own experiences on Twitter.