The 10 Twitter Commandments

Twitter can be used for many things. From communicating with friends, family and associates to building an online profile to promoting products and services, many individuals employ Twitter for important functions.

But some of them shoot themselves in the foot by engaging in Twitter sin.

Here are The 10 Twitter Commandments that will keep you away from sin:

• Thou shalt not use DM autoresponders. More often than not, DM autoresponders are used poorly. Unless you have a good reason to use them and know what you're doing, consider avoiding them altogether.
• Thou shalt not beg for retweets. If your content is good, other Twitter users will retweet it. Asking "pls RT" makes you look desperate.
• Thou shalt not autotweet. Unless your followers followed you to get automatic updates (eg. they know your account is tied to a content feed), autotweeting is usually a bad idea.
• Thou shalt not tweet in bunches. You know the guy who always sends out a couple dozen tweets in rapid-fire succession? Don't be that guy. Sending lots of tweets in a short period of time is just downright annoying.
• Thou shalt not take your followers on a trip to hashtag hell. Hashtags can be extremely useful but they're frequently abused by spammers, marketers and applications. So choose which ones you use wisely. Hint: hashtags relating to body parts, private matters, illegal activities and words you wouldn't use in the presence of your grandparents are usually the ones to avoid.
• Thou shalt not sex up your avatar. Everyone loves a pretty face but when it comes to your Twitter avatar, make sure that pretty face is your own. Using a photo of a beautiful woman or a studly man to attract attention is suitable only for the lowliest of spammers. And don't forget to keep your clothes on; your rock-hard abs may be worthy of exhibition on the beach but you probably don't need to show them off in Twitter's public timeline.
  
• Thou shalt not oversell. This is 'social' media. Just as nobody likes the person who is constantly selling vaccuum cleaners at the cocktail party on Friday, nobody likes the person who is selling via tweet 24x7. So even if you're using Twitter for business purposes, don't go overboard with the pitches; providing value with your tweets will do more for your selling efforts than 140 characters of hard pitch.
• Thou shalt not overfollow or autofollow. If you have 500 followers but are following 5,000 people, something is wrong. Some people have sophisticated beliefs regarding follower ratios; I don't. But common sense is in order: there are plenty of reasons not to follow other users and you should only follow people who you find interesting. As it relates to autofollowing, if I told you I was jumping off a cliff, would you follow me over the edge? Hopefully not. Consider applying the same logic when it comes to who you follow on Twitter.
• Thou shalt not sell out. Tweeting a message for a company for a chance to win a free laptop may be a good deal for the company but you'd probably ask for more if you were selling your soul and not your Twitter account. Even so, by tweeting marketing messages for compensation (or a chance at compensation), you send the message that you're easily bought and sold. That's probably not a message you want to send.
• Thou shalt not tweet before thinking. You are what you tweet. So think twice before saying something dumb. From retweeting a fake news story to crudely voicing a opinion that makes you look like a jerk, there are plenty of ways you can put your foot in your mouth in 140 characters. So keep your shoes on and your feet on the ground by thinking before you hit 'update'.

Photo credit: respres via Flickr.