12 May 2010 / , 0 ReTweets

What are Your Favorite Twitter Pet Peeves? Here are My Top 10. [VIDEO]

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Almost a year ago I wrote about my favorite LinkedIn pet peeves, which spurned a great list of 25 LinkedIn etiquette tips that arose from a discussion on the LinkedIn Executive Suite Group.  As I tend to spend more time on Twitter than LinkedIn these days, I think it’s time to focus on that social networking platform and talk about what drives me, and others, crazy about what users are doing on it.

Just as with LinkedIn, Twitter has its own unique sets of functionalities which creates the potential for different types of behavior.  With Twitter, the root of most of my pet peeves stems from the fact that there is a lot that you can automate on the platform.  Want to auto-followback those who follow you?  There’s an application for that.  Automatically send a Direct Message to your new Followers?  No problem!  Want to schedule the same tweet to repeat itself every 24 hours?  Can do!  I am all for automation if it allows me to spend more time on creating content and interacting with others.  But on the flip side, social interaction cannot be automated!

To create this post, I actually shot a video of a regular meeting that I have with two other social media bloggers here in Orange County, California discussing this topic.  These two gentlemen are on my blogroll, but you should also be checking out their blogs as they come both highly recommended: Tim Tyrell-Smith and his Tim’s Strategy blog on Career Management and Kevin Liebl‘s blog on Leadership.  I hope to post future videos from our chats, and we are open to chatting about what you want to hear, so please comment as you wish!

As you can see from our conversation, automation seems to be the root of all evil.  If I had to list my 10 favorite Twitter pet peeves, they would be:

  1. Only self-promoted tweets…using Twitter as a broadcasting channel.
  2. Automated Direct Messages
  3. Self-promoting Direct Messages
  4. No profile photo…who are you?
  5. Putting more than one location in your profile…where are you?
  6. Using a brand name for your Twitter handle.  How can you claim to be who you are?
  7. Only tweeting automated RSS feeds…using Twitter as a broadcasting channel.
  8. @Reply spam…I block these tweeps and report for spam every time.
  9. Following way too many people in comparison to the number of followers you have.
  10. Too many quotes.  Do that many people really enjoy all of those quotes from famous people?

What are your favorite Twitter pet peeves?

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  • http://www.gretchengary.com/ Gretchen Gary

    Great post! To add to your list, one of my big Twitter pet peeves is people who do not answer mentions or inquiries. Social media is supposed to be just that – social. People who do not respond to their mentions are missing the point.

  • Sigmund

    I have two:

    Tweeting useless stuff like 'I just ate an ice cream sandwich' and 'going to bed now'. I stopped following the guy who over-tweeted like this.

    And automatically retweeting the same set of tweets 5 times during the day (thanks, hootsuite). Can't believe Guy Kawasaki does this, but he does.

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  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Right on Gretchen, agree 100%!!!

  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Thanks Sigmund…excellent additions that I agree with!

  • http://www.careercurve.com Jen Turi

    Hi Neal,

    I’m a new follower and subscriber and I love your information. One question though. I am fairly new at tweeting and have been concerned about using it incorrectly. Your pet peeves about self promotion and broadcasting make sense and that’s why I haven’t done too much yet. How do you walk the line effectively between “I just ate an ice cream sandwich” and promoting comments on interesting blogs or new posts I write on my own. This is my role within my company but I’d really like to be social, not boring, and not offend or turn people off either. I want to have fun with this while still doing my job. Any suggestions?

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  • http://twitter.com/ThoughtsHappen Louise

    Mine is not ever, ever replying to an @reply or thanking for an RT. I can understand if someone is super-famous or is so hot on Twitter that they have a ton of followers that they can’t reply to every single one, but if you don’t fall into those two categories and you don’t respond to @replies that is a big pet peeve with me.

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  • http://personalbrandinguk.com/ Jorgen Sundberg

    How does Guy Kawasaki get away with it?!

  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Guy gets away with it because, well, he's Guy! ;-)

  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Hey Jen,

    Thanks for the comment! There obviously is no one correct method to tweeting. I agree that it's important to show a personal side in addition to sharing information about your company, but the sharing of personal information should be aligned with your company's brand. And I don't think this needs to be boring: engaging with people in conversations on Twitter is one of the funnest parts of social media! Instead of thinking about what you should tweet, maybe you should think more about engaging with your followers and finding new ones through communicating with more people online? Just my own to cents, but let me know if you have any follow-up questions!

    @NealSchaffer

  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Hi Louise,

    That's definitely fair game for a pet peeve. Twitter is a place for open conversations, and if you can't acknowledge those trying to communicate with you, that is definitely an issue. I personally don't always have time to respond to everyone all of the time, but I try to make it happen enough of the time to acknowledge those who acknowledge. For those people that don't acknowledge at all, it makes you wonder why they're on Twitter to begin with!

    @NealSchaffer

  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Guy gets away with it because, well, he's Guy! ;-)

  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Hey Jen,

    Thanks for the comment! There obviously is no one correct method to tweeting. I agree that it's important to show a personal side in addition to sharing information about your company, but the sharing of personal information should be aligned with your company's brand. And I don't think this needs to be boring: engaging with people in conversations on Twitter is one of the funnest parts of social media! Instead of thinking about what you should tweet, maybe you should think more about engaging with your followers and finding new ones through communicating with more people online? Just my own to cents, but let me know if you have any follow-up questions!

    @NealSchaffer

  • http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

    Hi Louise,

    That's definitely fair game for a pet peeve. Twitter is a place for open conversations, and if you can't acknowledge those trying to communicate with you, that is definitely an issue. I personally don't always have time to respond to everyone all of the time, but I try to make it happen enough of the time to acknowledge those who acknowledge. For those people that don't acknowledge at all, it makes you wonder why they're on Twitter to begin with!

    @NealSchaffer

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