My thoughts on twitter etiquette. 26 januari 2009

Twitter is a wonderful tool for news discovery, sharing of information and casual conversation. Many interesting people are on twitter, like Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson or Jason Calcanis. They're all entrepreneur heroes of mine.

Here are some of my thoughts on proper twitter usage:

1. Retweet any link you find interesting. By doing this you let great links go viral, and you bring attention to people who post interesting links. Allways include the original posters @name, to give credit to the starter of the meme. (Good point Mike!) Consider also including the @name of anyone retweeting an interesting link (retweeting a retweet).
2. For retweeting use the format "RT @name text...", and not via, retweet or anything else. This is for clarity and for readability.
3. Write in english. Most people on twitter is not of your nationality, and for better reach use an international language.
4. Keep you conversation clear. Twitter messages are like a river, that you take a dip into once in a while. Therefore, many of your followers didn't read your last tweet, or that which you're replying to. Thus you should try to help them understand your conversation. Try to answer with

   Thank you @name for commenting on my post on Twitequette: http://tinyurl.com/cnwqrw

   rather than

   Thank you @name for your comment.

   Every tweet is like a headline, and a good headline is clear and obvious.
5. Shorten your URL's. Use a tool like TinyURL.com to keep them from cluttering the conversation. Many twitter tools include this feature.
6. Use #hashtags often, but not too often. Don't clutter an hashtag with your tweets unless they're relevant.
7. Converse briefly. A few @'s back and forth is fine by me, but I don't really want to see your whole conversation. It's rarely that interesting. When conversations gets more personal, consider moving to direct message (DM) (Or maybe your favourite IM, since twitter directs are fubar). Guy Kawasaki is a master of this, I've got quite a few DM's from him from @'s he's replied to.

What are your twitter etiquette tips? I'd love to complete my list.

Also, if you don't allready, please follow me on twitter.