Top Five Twitter Etiquette Tips

Twitter has quickly become the most relevant social media websites, and is especially important in the public relations world. Twitter can be used for a wide variety of things, such as furthering one’s personal brands, connecting with other professionals and organizations and staying connected with what’s going on both in and out of the United States. In the fast-paced world of 140 characters, here a few tips to keep in mind when tweeting:

• Don’t overuse hashtags: While hashtags are both fun and can be helpful with connecting with others during events and conferences, use too many and the tweet begins to look a little messy. A good rule of thumb is to stick to three or less.

• No automatic DMs: To put it quite simply, they aren’t needed. The “thank you for the follow” and “feeling excited to connect with you” message isn’t personal. If looking to say something right away to a new follower, a personal tweet to the user tends to work much better!

• Try not to only tweet headlines and links: While it may be easier to just hit that “Retweet” button, if you do have the character room and want to add value to your tweet, go ahead and pull out an interesting line or two, or even a quote. While this may not apply to all types of articles you may see on Twitter, try and keep this one in the back of your mind next time you want to tweet out that really interesting article you just read.

• Don’t forget to add the MT: While just recently learning of this myself, the “MT” stands for “modified tweet.” As public relations students, we all know the thought and care that can go into crafting the perfect tweet. If you do have to slightly change another’s words in order to fit into the 140 requirement, don’t forget to MT to make others aware that wording was changed!

• If you are forced to write “spoiler alert,” don’t tweet it: Writing “spoiler alert” in your tweet pretty much ensures that something will be spoiled for somebody. In the age of Netflix and HBO GO, we all don’t watch our television programs at the same time when they air and if any of you are like me out there, Twitter has ruined many an episode of my favorite television programs. (particularly Game of Thrones last spring.) 

Are there any other tips that came to your mind while reading this? Is there anything that personally bothers you on Twitter? Share below!

This guest blog post was written by PRowl Staff Member Rachel Draghi.