NLC Social Media

Intent (Human Artist)

1. Don’t read EVERY tweet. It’s perfectly okay. You have permission.
2. Follow anyone who follows you (and unfollow spammers/jerks).
3. Promote other people 12x to every 1 self-promotional tweet.
4. Build lists to watch people who matter to you more closely.
5. Retweet the good stuff from others. Sharing is caring.
6. A lot of @replies shows a lot of humanity/engagement.
7. Robot tweets are less sexy than human tweets.
8. Promote the new/less followed more than the “names.”
9. Set an egg timer. Twitter is addictive.
10. Everyone does it their own way. You’re doing it wrong, too- to someone.

Technical

1. A non-standard background and face avatar means we believe you may be human.
2. Leave 20 characters or more space in each tweet to improve retweeting.
3. Use Seesmic or Tweetdeck or Hootsuite so you can see more.
4. Linking one update to several communities is technically possible. It’s just not respectful of each community’s uniqueness.
5. Tools like http://bit.ly let you see stats. Use them.
6. Make hashtags small and simple. We need room to tweet.
7. If software allows you to “post updates to Twitter” as well as to the app, don’t do that. We rarely want to see them.
8. If you develop software that pushes updates to Twitter, be VERY explicit how that works.
9. Every time you use OAUTH to give apps permission to use your account, you open a potential security hole. Check your permissions monthly.
10. The best mobile app is the one that you feel comfortable using. We don’t know better.

Business

1. Spamming us repeatedly is okay. We just unfollow you.
2. Spend more time in search than in chatting us up about your stuff.
3. Finding people who need what you’re selling trumps advertising to us.
4. Retweeting someone’s nice words about you is lame and doesn’t buy you more attention. Let it stand.
5. If your link is an affiliate link or a client, say so (in parentheses).
6. Your customers might not be on Twitter. Use rapleaf to find them.
7. Invite your customers to Twitter, then make it worth it for them.
8. Use Twitter as a personalized communication tool, not another blast.
9. Having different accounts for everything seems like the right move, until you realize it’s hard to grow multiple followings.
10. Just make money and then the boss won’t ask about ROI any more.

Integrated Usage

1. Twitter makes every event better. Post the hashtag everywhere. Make every speaker sign/label/name include a Twitter ID.
2. Apps like TweetChat.com make following event chats really easy. Put in a hashtag and go.
3. Tweeting the content of events is nice, but so is occasionally making a real live connection with the speaker.
4. It’s okay to tweet your blog posts, but try asking a question that leads readers into the post.
5. Can you invite Twitter followers to your other social platforms, like LinkedIn or Facebook? Sure you can.
6. I’m not into mixing my location apps with my tweets, but if you do, do it FROM the location app into Twitter, not the other way around.
7. Getting others to tweet your posts or news or registrations is useful, but sometimes comes off as a barrage or spam. Be prepared for that perception.
8. Tweets that point us to photos and/or video and/or music, etc, are always a great way to enhance the experience.
9. Please remove Twitter from LinkedIn. Use the #in tag instead and be selective.
10. Spammy or no, events that tweet their attendance registration seem to drive attendance.

Off-Twitter

1. Are your tweets really what you want to show in your sidebar? Doesn’t that direct people away from your site?
2. Think of Twitter as a guidance system to what you think is interesting. A lot of that is likely off-Twitter.
3. Apps like VisibleTweets.com are neat, but can be very distracting at events.
4. If you use tweets on a screen at an event, be warned if you moderate. Angry crowds can happen.
5. Don’t forget to invite people from off-Twitter to follow you on Twitter. Include your actual Twitter ID (I see lots of “follow me on Twitter” with no details).
6. Asking questions on Twitter makes for very interesting commentary and opinions for blog posts.
7. Tweetups are awesome, especially if you make them about more than just drinking and saying hi. (Though, hey, drinks can be nice.)
8. Outside of the Twitter app, keep “Tw” names to a minimum. We’re not your “tweeps.”
9. If your only marketing efforts are on Twitter, start building an email marketing list. Never put your eggs in one basket.
10. Start thinking in 120 characters (remember? save 20). Every bit of this advice is tweetable.

(Chris Brogan is an eleven year veteran of using social media and both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and makes media of all kinds at [chrisbrogan.com], a blog in the top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150, and in the top 100 on Technorati. He is co-author of the New York Times bestselling book Trust Agents, and the recently released Social Media 101.