Thanking people for retweets is dumb.
There, I’ve said it.
You don’t have to take my word for it. I’m not one of those social media gurus that are all over the interwebs who give “expert” advice. I’m just a regular guy who thinks that Twitter is fun. It could be even more fun, or at least less annoying at times, if people stopped doing certain things.
Thank You Tweets
We retweet because we read something that is worth sharing. The tweet is either: funny, hard-hitting, or exceedingly clever — all good reasons. The thank you tweet is the opposite of that. It is dull and not worth sharing. Yes, I know that people feel that it’s the polite thing to do and that social media experts recommend doing it, but I still say don’t. It’s irritating. I’ve done it, and have felt silly each time. If you do send thank you tweets, at least don’t place a period before the @reply.
A better idea is to wait for the person to tweet something that you like, and retweet that. They will appreciate that more than a thank you tweet.
Foursquare Updates
Help me, Lord! What possible good can come from these cryptic GPS driven announcements?
“Hey, I’m over here!”
Nonsense.
Follow Fridays
These are a good idea for letting your followers know of other people that you think they should follow. When I do it, I select an individual, not a traffic jam of every possible username that can be crammed into a tweet. No one clicks on those. If your Follow Friday tweet says that so and so is a good person to follow and you tell us why, I’ll usually check them out. If you just throw a bunch of @Names at me, no dice.
Celebrities
There is no correlation between earning a living as an athlete or entertainer and being a good tweeter. None!
If you are famous for making movies, there is no reason for me to believe that you are able to entertain me without a script. If you can whack a baseball deep into the night, it doesn’t mean that your tweets will engage me.
I’ve looked in on a few celebrities and I was thoroughly unimpressed. Hey, it’s my Twitter stream, so I’m allowed to be picky.
Rapid Fire Tweeting
For some, like me, tweets come in spurts. Something in the news gets us amped-up and we send off a string of frenzied tweets. Some of the best tweets occur during those moments when an emotional response drives us. Others are occasional tweeters. They wait until they come up with a good line. Because they tweet so little, it’s easy to miss their gems, mostly because of the third type of tweeter – the scorched earth tweeters. These folks clutter timelines by tweeting at an astounding rate for prolonged periods of time. Every thought that they have is simultaneously conveyed to the world. They can’t really believe that their followers are that into them, can they?
My mother loves me, but even she wouldn’t want to be exposed to that kind of thought intimacy.
Auto Tweets
Tweeting, like all social media, is supposed to be interactive. What’s less interactive than scheduling tweets and then walking away? A one-time auto tweet announcing your latest blog post is one thing, but the same tweet (or group of tweets) repeated day after day is too much to take.
I’m warning you. I have a mouse and I’m not afraid to use it to unfollow if I see that tweet about something that happened last month one more time!
Not Following Back
If I start following you, I expect to be followed back. You are under no obligation to do so, of course, but you shouldn’t be surprised if I unfollow as a result. We don’t have to be best buds, or anything like that, but a one-way dialogue just doesn’t interest me. Last week, I tweeted about what does interest me.
I know that you’re out there – diverse, interesting, regular folk who tweet less yet say more. I’ll find you one at a time.
Ray Colon
RamonEColon
I use the free justunfollow service to identify non-followers, with oldest non-followers listed first. Spend too much time on this list, and you’re gone. They also have made it easy to unfollow everyone and start over. Depending on the day, this is a tempting proposition.
There you have it – one man’s plan for making Twitter better. As you can see, I don’t have a lot of followers, so this post may seem to be sour grapes… but it’s not.
I would just like to enjoy a less noisy, less egocentric, and more interactive Twitter.
I know, That’s crazy talk!
For now, I’ll just keep looking until I find tweeps that entertain me the way that I want to be entertained.
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If you tweet, what do you like or dislike about the experience?
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Author Bio:
Ray Colon has written 136 posts on Ray's Blog.
He works with numbers for a living, but don't judge - boring accountants need love too. His blog has no niche (unless writing about things that are important to him is a niche). Some folks cringe when he gets “all political” on them, but he does it anyway when he's in that kind of mood. Sometimes, he writes something nice about someone, but you shouldn't get used to that. His first book, the one he hasn't written yet, is not available on Amazon. Subscribe to Ray's Blog via RSS or Email.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t tweet as much as I used to because I don’t have the time. I don’t use it as I should because I don’t ‘study’ Twitter because I don’t have the time. I shoot the breeze every now and then and link up with some fellow bloggers. It’s nice to keep in touch now and then.
Hi SurprisedMom,
Yes, time is always an issue for all of this social media stuff. When I’m home, I usually have a tab open to Twitter and looking it on what’s happening on the phone is convenient when I take a break at work. I don’t know about studying Twitter, but I do know what I like about it and what I don’t. There are some people who really have a knack for being pithy, and their tweets are routinely entertaining. Catching a funny tweet can take the edge off of an otherwise seriously busy day at the office.
Ray
I don’t tweet much anymore because i find Twitter really distracting and time consuming. I probably don’t do it right either because i mostly follow people who only tweet on one subject – the writing “experts” or the diabetics who cannot talk about ANYTHING else. Most of my followers blindly follow me because i put diabetic in my description and if i took the time to ever tweet i may just take that part out. I kind of feel like Twitter has too many rules. I like your street rules. You have common sense in the social media world. Good for you. Someone needs to!
Hi Tristan,
Trying to keep up, even when following a reasonable number of people, can be very time consuming, so I don’t try. When I’m on Twitter, I’ll read through the current tweets and move forward from there. I know that I don’t “do it right” either, since I hesitate to put something out there more than once. Things get stale really fast on Twitter.
Like you, I started by following people that I thought were interested in writing, but have found that so many of them focus on how-to-write rather than actually writing anything. Kind of weird.
I chuckled as I wrote this because I get few visitors via Twitter links, so more so than usual, I’m probably talking to myself.
Ray
Tweeting is only for passing gossip links and real news links. Hard to add punch in a 140 character line without sounding like barkster. I only do it for 2 blogs which support organizations. I don’t even have a personal twitter page. I’m not exactly hot-footin’ to get one either.
Hi Jean,
Tweeting isn’t for everybody. I know folks who love it and others, like you, who don’t seem to like it at all. Since I wrote this, I’ve come to enjoy it even more. On some occasions, like tweeting while watching the debates, it’s been very entertaining. I still don’t spent a lot of time there, but I do check in to see what’s happening on most days.
It must be tougher tweeting for a business or an organization since you’re representing them and not yourself. As we’ve seen on the news, it’s easy to make a mistake in that situation. Be careful.
Ray