Basic Twitter "rules."

Basic Twitter "rules."

I've come up with a few personal guidelines to follow with Twitter. These are not hard and fast rules, and by no means do I mean to imply everyone should follow them, it's just what I try to follow 90% of the time to make my Tweets as useful and fun for everyone as possible.

• Each Tweet should be a self-contained story. A teensy bit of context goes a long way, and it's not always easy to do in 140 characters (and even less if it's a reply) but it makes your conversations so much easier to understand.
• Try to convey a story beyond your current position or minimal action. Nothing annoys me more than those "I am at such and such a place" Tweets. Or, "I am eating a cantaloupe!" That is boring. I'm not saying NEVER do it, but if you do it often it's pretty annoying.
• Engage people who engage you. I can't follow everyone that follows me, but I try and reply when it's not redundant.
• Don't set Twitter to automatically suck in your Facebook status. I don't mind a little mirroring of the two sometimes, but if it always happens it starts to feel like spam.
• Twitter is great when you can combine it as a single tool to entertain, inform, and log what's on your mind all at the same time. At least that's what II try to do most of the time.

That's basically it! And like I said, it's just my take on how to better use Twitter in such a way that perfect strangers might actually take interest in what you have to say. There's no right or wrong answer here ... this is just what I think works for me best so far.

So having said that, are you subscribed to the Tankboy Twitter?