Emily’s Top 10: Not-To-Do’s and Good-To-Do’s for Healthy Tweeting

Not-To-Do:

1. Ask followers to retweet every post. Retweets are something you earn. If the other people reading said retweets wanted to be following you, they would be. This amounts to shameless pandering for follower boosts.
2. Link in every post. You’ll burn out your readers and become ineffective.
3. Only post about how many dust bunnies are under your couch or other menial life details. Think: what’s the value to my followers? If there is none, it doesn’t belong in a post, it belongs in your diary.
4. Only post about business. One word: boooring.
5. Post every few months. Twitter functions in the short-term. A three-month gap between tweets, and many of your followers will have already forgotten who you are.

Good-To-Do:

1. Respond to others’ posts. In social media, the key word is “social.” Work it.
2. Think headlines from your life … you’ve only got 140 characters, so give us the highlights, not the whole novel.
3. Share your likes, your hates, your insights, your expertise. The world’s becoming more and more integrated, and along with it, people are integrating their personal and professional worlds. Mixing yours can help you connect better with your audience and increase your profile in your field.
4. Retweet. Like citing sources in a paper, if someone tweets something worth repeated, give credit where it’s due. When it’s your turn, you’ll reap the rewards.
5. Post frequently. Posting is your number one ticket to building a follower base. Organic growth is the best way to grow a steady, loyal audience.

There you have it, short and tweet. Twitter may be fresh and even completely foreign to you, but the best way to learn it is to jump right in. No rules are hard and fast: take notice of the practices of the Tweeple that you enjoy and hate the most; then internalize these practices to improve your own. And of course, if you need more guidance, just drop me a line.