Firstly your profile picture.
Twitter is about the conversation – joining in, being relevant, interesting and, if you can, at least occasionally, amusing. We want to see what you look like because we want to hear from you and talk to you. If you’re a magazine, a large business (although if ASOS can make it personal why can’t you?) or an ‘info’ site – in other words all you tweet about are interesting facts and figures then you can get away with it. But if you are a person tweeting on your own behalf, even if you are part of a business, make it personal and be there for us.
Secondly your bio.
If you cannot be bothered to put up an interesting, readable and friendly bio then don’t expect me to follow you, and I hope others won’t either. Quite frankly what are you doing on Twitter? We don’t have a clue from the get-go so get on with it or go away. There’s enough spam and rubbish on Twitter to make it hard enough as it is. Without a bio you could be anyone and who has the time to find out about you? Not me, for sure.
Thirdly auto thankyous for following
I know that a lot of people do this. I dislike it intensely. It is so obvious. If you want to thank me then thank me in person, on Twitter. Otherwise don’t bother. It’s such a blatant marketing ploy and with me it fails every time. Please stop. I don’t thank people for following me. I talk to them when I’m there and there’s something (hopefully) interesting to say. Otherwise not.
My advice to anyone on Twitter is this:
Don’t even give the time of day to anyone without a picture.
Ditto a bio
Block instantly if something catches your eye but the Tweeter has no followers
Do not ever open links on Twitter from anyone you don’t know and trust.
I think these are quite simply common sense, however there are so many without pictures and without bios that this is obviously not the case. Also, and this one is personal. I seriously dislike seeing swear words on Twitter (or anywhere else for that matter). I may cuss at the dogs at home when they pinch the roast chicken off the side………………………….but in writing? No. Absolutely never. And you will be stuck with it for life. That’s just me and it’s totally up to you.
