Rules to tweet by

One of the best and worst things about social media is that anyone can make up the rules, i.e. the conventions, protocols and etiquette by which we collectively conduct ourselves. For instance, someone once made up a rule that PR people shouldn’t blog on behalf of clients. Like sheep, we all nodded and went along for a while murmuring slogans like “Must be authentic.” Someone else finally questioned “Why?” Debate ensued, logic prevailed, and blogging services (with the proper disclosure) have become a standard PR offering these days.

Social media norms tend to be self-regulating. We now all agree that censoring blog comments is bad (except for trolls and incendiary words).  Writing in upper-case sentences = SHOUTING = impolite. And our Farmville-playing Facebook friends got the hint and stopped annoying us with their barnyard updates.

Twitter, on the other hand, remains largely un-self-regulated. Despite the wealth of tools available for filtering and finding good information, Twitter’s poor noise-to-signal ratio remains the #1 obstacle to adoption cited by our clients. So in the spirit of self-regulation, I want to direct you to Mathew Inman’s witty 10 things you need to stop tweeting about from the popular The Oatmeal site, even though it may suck 80% of the oxygen out of the Twittersphere if the rules are embraced.

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