What is Your Twitter Policy?

By Laura Summers, on January 26th, 2012

Reading back over my Twitter posts here, I was prompted to ask people today what they use Twitter for. I had some interesting conversations as a result and made some cool new contacts.

I have two questions for you:

1. What is your Twitter policy?

Mine is fairly simple;

I try to make sure I reply to all @ questions
I thank people for retweets
I don’t auto follow back
I never action a validation request DM to prove I’m a real tweeter
I unfollow almost anyone who claims to be a guru of some type
I unfollow inactive users
I retweet tweets from people asking for recommendations or help
I retweet useful content
I retweet funny content

I don’t have this written down anywhere (I guess I do now…) and it’s not an official rule book but it’s just how I think and what I do when I am in Twitter mode (which is 70% of the time).

As an addition to this;

2. What are your Twitter pet peeves?

Again mine are pretty straightforward:

When someone asks for recommendations; you offer one or retweet… and they never reply
Cringe worthy bios (click here to avoid this)
Hashtag abuse (#someonewhocantpostatweetwithoutsixteenhashtagssayingthesamethingindifferentwordsoracronyms)
Social media ‘gurus’
Auto DMs in general but especially ones asking me to connect on Facebook (thanks to @NorthcoteBeers for the reminder on this one!)

I love my Twitter time. I have a great group of people with whom I can share a great giggle, seek advice from or share with. I try to bear in mind that not everyone follows thousands of people and therefore my relentless tweeting can fill up a timeline pretty fast… but other than that I’d like to think I offer something useful or worthwhile to my followers.

Am genuinely interested to know your views on either or both of the above. You can leave a comment below, email me or @ me on twitter Oh and of course, to help get as many replies as possible – go ahead and click ‘tweet’ below!