How to Use Twitter Without Being Annoying

Here are a few tips on how to use Twitter without being annoying.

Twitter is a networking tool.

Twitter is a networking tool more than anything else. Have genuine, honest conversations. Ask questions. Answer questions. Say something interesting.

Don't send direct messages promoting your website.

When you follow someone and they follow you back, it's ok to send them a direct message, but don't send them the URL to your website saying, "Check out my site." That is very annoying.

Don't sell your website.

Twitter isn't a marketplace. Don't give a sales pitch in your tweets. People on Twitter don't want to buy your product.

Don't feed too many messages into Twitter at once.

It's ok to feed your blog or website into a Twitter account, but don't send too many messages into Twitter from your site or it will overwhelm your followers' Twitter clients. They will just see a constant stream of information from your site that will drown out what their other friends are saying. I'm talking about the people who post an automated tweet every 5 seconds, or who post 10 at a time.

BTW, Twitterfeed.com is a good way to feed your website into Twitter.

No link spam.

Don't use Twitter for just spamming links. All links on Twitter are nofollowed, and you're going to be missing out on the main benefit of Twitter which is networking.

Don't use ad-based redirect services

Don't redirect URLs with services like ow.ly (Hootsuite), adjix.com or other frame-based URL shorterners. It's as spammy as sending your followers popup ads.

Twitter Resources

It's easier to use Twitter if you download a desktop Twitter client. I'm still hoping that they bring back Jabber integration, but for now I'm using Twhirl TweetDeck.

Check out Twitterholic.com to see to the top Twitter users (currently Barack Obama).

If you want to follow me on Twitter my account is here:
http://twitter.com/webmastertips