Tweet My Way, Or Else...
Tuesday, February 23rd 2010 @ 7:30 AM 
(1 ratings)
I came very close to giving up on Twitter, but as my good friend Ryan reminded me, Twitter is not the problem, it is the ignorant people who use it.
Twitter is a fairly new tool with very loose "rules". Some use it for personal reasons, some use it for business. Some use Twitter to gain followers and have the appearance of credibility. Some use Twitter to follow those they are interested in. Some auto tweet, some tweet manually, some use direct message, some use @replies. Some schedule tweets, some don't tweet at all. Who is using Twitter the wrong way? I'll tell you who, the idiots who discipline you for choosing to use Twitter differently then they do.
I personally have about 10 Twitter accounts for each of my websites/podcasts. I use just about every Twitter strategy there is so I can know first hand what works and what doesn't. Just about every strategy has it's benefits and depending on your goal, you would choose the one that works best for YOU. But unfortunately, many people in the Twittersphere will not accept that logic -- and they will be sure to tell you about it.
I have never been a fan of following people just because they follow you. To me, that is extremely ingenuous. It's like telling someone , "Hey, I am interested in what you have to say" then walking away when they start talking. But, some people really believe that if someone follows you, you are obligated to follow that person back -- otherwise you are not a nice person. Fine. That is wonderful part about Twitter -- Twitter doesn't make you follow these kind of rules, you do what works for you.
I recently purged one of my accounts from all the accounts I was "following" (thousands) because, let's face it... who can possibly follow that many and even come close to reading a fraction of the Tweets? My goal has shifted from getting more followers to using the account for communication. After about a year of constant tweets from angry people saying "How can you possibly follow 6000+ people! @#$! You!" or similar harsh messages, when my follower list was purged to 28 I get this message:
I did not ask this person to follow me. This person simply came across my account and felt the need to spread hate publicly simply because I was not following 1000's of accounts like he/she was.
If a Twitter user is breaking the Twitter ULA or Terms and Conditions, then feel free to report him or her to the Twitter staff. But if a person is using Twitter differently than you, please, have some understanding and whatever your do, keep your mean and nasty comments to yourself. The world will be a better place :)
