Twitter best practices

Just some ideas:

1. Save the salutations. Very few people want to read “good morning” “brb” or care if you’re going to bed. The few people who do actually care should be direct messaged, or talked to on an instant messaging system (gtalk, aim, etc.)
2. Easy on the links. CNN and Politico use twitter to link to their articles. This news ticker function is perfectly fine. But unless you are a news agency, or a comedy site, people are not interested in solely seeing links to your blog.  There’s nothing wrong with linking to a new post, but you will start annoying followers if your tweets are only links to your blog. Those of us who are that interested are subscribed to your RSS.
3. You don’t always have to return follow. A return follow is nice, but not necessary. I do not return follow companies or people who are pushing products that I’m uninterested in. I also don’t return follow people whose status updates are uninteresting. Why clog the news feed? Also, these companies/hoarders are the first people to unfollow you after a day so they can follow more people.
4. Define your purpose. Why are you on twitter? Some people are determined to get the most followers possible, which makes sense if you’re selling something or promoting a site. But there is little reason for noncommercial users to arbitrarily add people who they have no interest in communicating with. This isn’t myspace. You aren’t Tila Tequila. Give it a rest.
5. Generate, don’t aggregate. If all you do is retweet other users, then you’re not adding anything to the conversation. People will simply follow the source and cut the middleman (you). I suggest getting a tumblr blog if  you want to aggregate other people’s content or share bookmarks.
6. Use direct messages when having a conversation with someone or sending a short reply. A wall of nonsensical @ replies isn’t interesting to anyone, and just clogs newsfeeds.
7. Check the drama, pity. You wouldn’t stand up in a crowded bus and shout something self deprecating would you? Doing so on Twitter might actually be worse. Save the drama and self-pity.
8. Use a twitter client. Twhirl and Tweetdeck are the most common. It makes Twitter so much more practical. If you want to be super productive you can also have twitter update your facebook status.
9. Consider separate accounts. It’s very common for people to have both protected and public accounts. I use @dennisjansen to update my facebook page, so it’s less frequently updated than my @dennisjansen account. Remember if you choose to protect your updates they are still only quasi-private because your friends can still retweet your protected tweets.