For a long time I’ve been wanting to put together a ‘best practices‘ for those looking to tighten up their professional Twitter presence. So instead of just doing a boring old “Twitter Best Practices“, I thought I’d mix it up by getting creative and creating a list of what I call the “Ten Twitter Commandments“.
Whether you’re establishing your personal brand, promoting your company or organization, or just wanting to not look like a n00b tweeter, I believe you can benefit from incorporating the following best practices (a.k.a. “Commandments“) and be a step ahead of the average twitter user. So, without further ado, here are the Ten Twitter Commandments:
[This is part of the How To: Social Media Series, check out the rest of the series HERE.]
1. Thou shalt have no ridiculously obscure user name.
It’s no longer the 1990′s, where people used random strings of obscure words and numbers to create their online alias. Now-a-days it’s best to just use your name. Friends, family, fans, or potential clients will be looking for YOUR NAME. Don’t make it hard for them to find you. Even though there could be debate for branding purposes.
2. Thou shalt make of thee a graven image, or some likeness of thee.
There is no better way to broadcast the fact that you are a n00b than to have that weird egg as your profile picture. So, please, go and get an image of yourself, or even something vaguely represents or resembles you and make it your profile picture. (This is also known as an ‘avatar’.) It doesn’t have to be a professionally done photo. You just need something there that represents you. It drives me NUTS when I see that n00b egg.
3. Thou shalt not take up the entire stream of thy followers; for the followers will not hold him guiltless that taketh his entire screen.
I don’t care how much I love you, if you are tweeting five times per minute and my entire twitter stream is consumed by your tweets no matter how inspiring or profound, I will likely unfollow you. If you are bombarding someones news feed with your banter, it will only be a matter of time before they either tune you out, or flat out remove you.
4. Remember the link shortener, to keep it tiny; 140 characters shalt thou type, and do all thy tweeting.
When you want to share a link to a website, blog, YouTube video, or the like, always use a link-shortening service such as bit.ly, is.gd, goo.gl, etc. That way, you will have more room to share what its about and you’ll look like you know what you’re doing.
5. Honor thy followers and mentioners.
Twitter is not a place to monologue. If all you plan on doing is broadcasting your message and not engaging with your audience, you should just do us a favor, stay off of Twitter. Of course, if you’re Justin Bieber you can’t respond to everyone, but let’s face it, you’re not the Bieber. Respond to legitimate mentions.
6. Thou shalt not spill the beans.
This is a lesson I forget sometimes (even recently). If you are going to tweet the results of a sports event, or reality TV show (such as Celebrity Apprentice) make sure you indicate the on-coming ‘spoiler‘ by typing “SPOILER ALERT” at the beginning. Trust me, some people take their TV shows very seriously, and if you ruin the surprise it’s as if you’ve kicked their puppy or something.
7. Thou shalt not commit SPAM.
I’ve covered this before, so I’ll just touch on it one more time– don’t be spam. Moving on.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
This one didn’t need to be modified from the original Biblical text at all. In this context, make sure you alway cite someone if you are quoting them. This can be done many ways (I talk about it in this post). Just always be sure you’re not passing along someone else’s wisdom, wit, or work as your own.
“Spiritual Creativity is Gods vision and provision, instilled into a man who is willing to listen with self-less ambition.” – @JarridWilson
— Dustin W. Stout (@DustinWStout) May2, 2011
9. Thou shalt not bear boring witness against thy followers.
We don’t want to know when you’re using the restroom, tying your shoe, or taking out your garbage. Unless of course it’s got some sort of entertainment value. The following video offers a great illustration of the ridiculousness of mundane tweeters.
[tentblogger-youtube PN2HAroA12w]
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s followers, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s retweets.
Don’t get jealous because someone’s numbers are higher than yours. A large number of followers doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There are various ways to measure your success via the social sphere, but follower count isn’t one of them. As far as retweets go, if you’re not getting as many as you would like, just write better tweets! One of my favorite writers talks more about it in his post titled “Two Ways To Get People To Retweet You“.
11. Thou shalt follow DustinWStout on Twitter
This one is a bonus, not necessarily a commandment; just a suggestion.
And as an added bonus, I’ve created individual slides for each commandment!
But wait, there’s more! I’ve acutally visualized these commandments to be even more awesome and sharable! Check out Visualized: Ten Twitter Commandments!
Is there anything that I left out that you think should be added to the list? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
Great summary! You’ve covered all the commandments we’ve all broken at one point or another. Now we’ve got the commandments there’s no excuse!! Thanks, I think.
Yes, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of Twitter… Ok, maybe that was too far. Haha!
LOL
No No.. #EpicFail LOL After all…we are talking Twitter here…lol. Okay…that was just a throwaway reply because I needed a place to put an extra post since you added the notifications I needed to change my email address…lol. Uh Oh…have I unleashed the #FailWhale?
Great blog I enjoy reading your blogs and tweets I thank God that it’s not just me that wants our tweets to count and be useful to others Christians or not. I also find it helps me write better tweets with the knowledge that’s it’s my duty to be a good witness and so I try to always put God in the centre of my tweets.
That’s awesome Esther! It’s all for His glory!
Loved it. Great twitter commandments to tweet by!
Thanks Adam!
Okay so I have already broken the first one but in my defense when I signed up I never planned to using it and everyone knew me by that username. I DID however think about changing it back when I signed up Barbie but now if I do you will think I did it because of you blog. So I think a sufficient cooling off period is in order…LOL. By the way…I LOVE The video!
haha! Glad you liked it David. Do you know it’s really easy to just change your twitter username? Just go to your settings and you can change it at any time with no hassle. I’ve done it SEVERAL times.
How does changing it affect you logins though? Do you have to change all you connections with affiliate programs? Or does your log in remain the same? Like I said..I was planning the change, I just have to decide now how I want to post my name..lol.
Okay…so I checked it out and I can go with my name but just for the heck of it I did a simple search of my my name and I am listed first and now I am wondering if that’s because my username starts with a B and that puts me ahead of all the Davids with Ds? lol…Now see what you have gone and done? LOL… #indecisive #failsauce
I’ll be writing another post this week about my thoughts on personal branding. Hopefully that will help you with deciding. In the meantime you can always pray about it!
Although I am not on twitter, I like these! Very creative!
Thanks Brandon! You should get on Twitter! There is no better place to keep up with some of the best bloggers/leaders/etc AND get your content noticed by the masses. Go DO IT!
Well, the only thing that is keeping me from twitter is that my parents will not allow me to get one yet.
I knwo that there are lots of great uses for it, but I guess not until I am 18! haha
Ah..the magic 18
I remember how well the “I’m 18 now” worked for my beloved…LOL. A word of advise. You would be better suited to demonstrate the advantages of having a Twitter account now to follow pastors and good Christian leaders who can help on your path than to assume that when you are of age but still under their roof you should be entitled to anything that your parentals deem inappropriate. Just Sayin’ 
Thats cool man! Obeying your parents is a GREAT practice to hold to. Col. 3:20
Speaking of spam, do you get a lot of spam on your blog? I get a ton on mine…luckily, the filter catches it!
Yes, I do get a lot of spam. Thanks to Akismet though, it has always been caught.
I have Askimet too. In the short time of my blog with wordpress, I have already had like 30 spam comments!
If I remember right, michael hyatt receives in the hundreds per day!
yea, I’ve had a TON of spam in only 2 solid months on a self-hosted WordPress.
Hmm..How was your spam level on Posterous? Is the spam in relation to WordPress or to the advertising experiment you did on Facebook? Makes me second think moving my stuff to WP when and if I ever get the time to really attack blogging more. I don’t get any traffic except a few friends when I write something new but I have yet to get a single spam post so it make me wonder where the spam results from. How are they tracking to your blog?
I’m not sure how the spammers do it, but it is a WordPress thing. I don’t recall ever getting any spam on Posterous. But thanks to a feature that’s built into all WordPress sites called Akismet, 99.9% of spam is caught, flagged, and easily deleted without ever being seen by the general public.
What am I going to do without you when we move back to Texas?
I don’t know… You’re just going to have to keep reading, & sharing I guess!
That sounds like a plan! Keep up the good work with the blog. Patricia and I need to get busy on ours.
Git to it! lol
Dustin,
Do you have the option to set the notification via email radio button on your blog so we can choose to be notified when you or someone else replies to one of our comments? I try to track back to places I have posted but I don’t want to miss if someone has posted a comment on a post in a blog post I haven’t visited in a while. Just wondering if it’s an option
I actually posted this on C40X but it seems the crickets have taken up residence over there…lol.
Surprisingly enough, I was actually unaware that my wonderful, best EVER WordPress Theme didn’t already have a “subscribe via email” already built in… You should notice, I’ve not added one. Thanks for bringing this to my attention David! What would I do without you?
I am actually Subsribed to your email updates for new blog posts. But what I am looking for I now see below that you have added
Woo Hoo!! You rock!
Yeah, that definitely helps! I was wondering (because I havr this on my site…), can someone respond to a comment directly via the email sent?
I don’t think so. If you reply I believe it goes to the blog host as opposed to posting to the comment.
Not with any of the plugins that I’ve seen.
You know…after some more research…I think a debate is in order for Twittermandment #1…lol.
So a search of my friend Nancy Zuellig found her even though her user namer is nanzeeeee because her name is listed as Nancy Zuellig, just like a search for me finds me even though my user name is barbwyr1 because some wierdo stole my user name…lol. As long as you are using your proper name in the first and last field the search function seems to work just fine because in my case there is already a David Willard or davidwillard and if I use a variant it’s the same as using barbwyr1 because a search for David Willard will still find me even if I put dralliw divad as my user name, so long as my first and last are accurate. Additionally, when you begin an @mention of someone if you start to type their proper name is automatically pulls them up in the list by user name so perhaps the Twittermandment should pertain more to using your proper name in the first last field than in your user name. I do think I answered my own question…it looks like it drops your old user name all together so you will have to reconnect your associated apps, devices, links and the like if you change your user name.
Any thoughts?
I will talk more about this in my post on branding later this week. Again, it’s best to think of these Tweetmandments as suggestions and best practices. They’re not necessarily ‘written in stone’. (You like how I worked that in?) But just to solidify your research, go search for “Dustin Stout” on Twitter, under people. You may get what I’m shooting at. And again, the branding post later this week will dive deeper into my philosophy of this. Thanks David!
Good Grief Man…You’re going to make me WAIT? You just want me to have to visit and test out your new email subscription features which I can now manage by clicking below. But I will do the search of your name to see what I find for the heck of it. Because I know there is another Dustin Stout out their as I believe you have mentioned. For now, I will await your next post
Haha!
This was great! Thanks Dustin!
Hey this is a great post. #6 cracks me up. and I agree with brandon that the banner tweaks look very cool.
Have you just been doing this blog for 2 months?
Thanks again Rob! Yes, I have only been on WordPress for 2 months.
Same here! I guess we started at the same time…
PS. I really like the new banner/logo at the top right!
Thanks! I got inspired lastnight and threw it together. It took a few tries, but I’ve ALMOST got it where I want it. It’s actually a full width banner.
What program do you use to edit photos and such?
I only have paint right now b/c I have never really needed to do this kind of stuff before. Will paint still edit things?
You can use Paint, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s very limited & doesn’t yield quality results (unless you’re REALLY good.)
I use Photoshop. But I’ve been doing graphic design for years. You can find a free online version of Photoshop (or free alternatives) just by doing a quick Google search.
Hey Dustin…I could use a little help with #4. I have been messing around with BitLy Pro. I noticed you are using your dustn.us as your short URL but I am having trouble getting it to recognize when I set up the URL in the A location in the DNS in GoDaddy. I am not sure if it’s because it’s already directed to my webpage or if I am just missing the mark all together. Any advice you can shoot me would be great. You can email it if you would prefer. barbwyr(at)att.net will send it to my BlackBerry. Thanks
If you check mine again, you’ll notice I’m actually using “dustn.ws” for my short-urls. The way that bit.ly does it, you need to have a domain strictly dedicated for the short-URL that has nothing else attached to it. That may be where it’s going wrong.
Ahhh…Got it! That makes sence. Too bad they didn’t have .wyr as a TLD…lol. I think I have some work to do now. Thanks for the help.
Thank you for the help…Once I picked up a domain specifically for URL shortening it was a piece of cake. Now I can look just that much more professional when I am sending out blogs that only my mom is reading…LOL. Doesn’t it look neat! http://barbwyr.us/kj5DY0
Okay…maybe a few more people than just mom
My last 2 posts got 15 views each so a few people read them. I even added a picture to the latest one. I am trying to fancy it up a little. How about a post on blog writing to go with your Standard Theme resource post?
Hey D – do you have advice on how to use lists? I’d like to follow different twitters differently.
It’s funny you asked Rob, I’ve got a “How To: Use Twitter Lists” brewing for my next social media post! You must be a prophet…
Awesome! You’ll post it on May 21st , right? Oops – missed that one …
I’ve always thought these kind of lists/commandments/rules are for people who have no common sense, either way I partly disagree with some of the things stated here:
Comm 1 – Ok, nice idea, in fact: impossible, think about how many similar names or people with the exact same name are around, you seriously are suggesting something like:
JohnSmith
johnsmith
JoHnSmItH
JohnSmith123
JohnSmithXyZ
It’s impratical, while a witty username sticks better to mind, and is not detrimental to your image, and BTW twitter added the “Name / Surname” title for this precise reason: you can have VladXa567 as username but “Vladimir Kapaciov” as name so they WILL find you using your name.
Comm 6 – Do you seriously care about spoilering others? What I mean is: if I’m happy about my team winning why should I care about telling others that I’m spoilering the match?
It’s like being in pub and yelling :”HEY I’M GONNA TELL YOU THE MATCH RESULT” before yelling “[TEAMXYZ] WON, YYYIIAAA”.
Again: seriously?
As a last note I would like to state that Twitter as Facebook is a Social Network and the blabbering and chatting each and everyone of us does on it is just that: CHAT.
Like the thing you do with your friends offline: you chat, your chat can be interesting or boring or spamming but it’s what it is: chat.
Don’t get too serious about it as it will be forgotten faster than saying “tweet”.
I appreciate your feedback Lex. Here’s my thoughts on what you’ve suggested:
Comm 1 – “Impossible…”? Really? Did you notice my twitter name? How about the millions of others who have managed to grab their real name? I see the value of using a brand name (as I’ve talked about here) but I hold to my statement for those who want to create a professional social presence.
Comm 6 – Yes. I believe in common courtesy. Again, more from a professional standpoint. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to put “#SPOILERALERT” before you express how excited you are that Star Jones got booted from Celebrity Apprentice.
Last note – If that’s how you see it, sure!
I have a question. When I followed you on twitter you sent a message saying thanks for following you. (which i’m sure is probably automatic or something – if it is how do you do that? This is not my original question!) Perhaps this would fall under commandment #5 Honour thy followers and mentions. Should I say thanks for following on the public feed or in a private message like you did?
Do you have anything about spammers or people you don’t want to follow you?
Ok, so I have more than a question
Since I’m writing a post about your first question, I’ll give you the short answer (because there’s many ways to do it): ifttt. That’s the service I use, and you can find my recipe here.
And, contrary to that, I recommend thanking new followers by @reply. The DM has lost it’s allure to most as too many spammers have ruined the DM inbox.
Thanks for the quick response, Dustin. I will check into that. I look forward to the post about this!