a twitter primer for Warcraft peeps
Tip 1: Narrow Your Focus
Consider creating a twitter account just for your warcraft or gaming related tweeps. Why? Because your non-gaming friends don’t care about your Warcraft achievements, and your Warcraft tweeps don’t want to hear about your bunions. That said, DO share the occasional off topic RT or photo or recipe so we can get to know you a little better.
Tip 2: Upload a Unique User Icon
It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, but you need to upload a graphic of some sort to identify yourself with. It can be a RL photo, or a screen grab of your character. If you use one of the default user icons, your followers can’t see at-a-glance who you are, and might even mistake you for a SPAMbot.
Tip 3: Don’t Name Your Account Jenny2435
Speaking of SPAMbots, they all seem to name their accounts this way. If I see you’ve followed 800 people, never tweeted, and are named this way, you’re going to be reported for SPAM and blocked.
Tip 4: Don’t Auto-follow Back
There are tools out there that will automatically add back everyone who follows you. Don’t use them! Why? Because this is a great way to end up with a ton of bots or "Get 800 twitter followers in 10 days" scammers on your following list.
Tip 5: Put Time Into Your Bio
Your bio is a primary way that folks decide if they have enough in common with you to follow you back, so it’s worth taking some time to consider what t put there. It’s also great to have a link in your profile. If you don’t have a blog, you can link to your WoW armory profile, or even your guild’s website. But be sure NOT to use a URL shortener for that link – that’s a common SPAMbot tactic.
Tip 6: Resist the Urge to Auto-Post Achievements to Twitter
If you SPAM my twitter feed with your in-game achievements from an automated feed, or I get a play-by-play through RSS postings of every new piece of gear you are equipping, you are going to take a quick trip to the unfollowed list. It’s one thing to have this as a gadget on your blog; it’s incredibly annoying in the middle of a twitter conversation.
Tip 7: Don’t #FF Your Entire Following List
I love seeing who folks list in the Follow Friday (#FF) lists and have found plenty of new folks to follow from them. That’s because they are a timely, curated list, or even a 1-at-atime peek into the more interesting folks they follow. If you hurt the feelings of someone you follow by not including them in your 140 characters for #FF, they are probably a little more high maintenance than you need.
Tip 8: Continue the Conversation
If you ask a question or for others to share their opinions, engage them in conversation. It’s tacky to use the question tactic as a way to cheese your twitalyzer standings (i.e. to generate more @you then you @others.) Twitter is about sharing and conversing with others, not about inflating your ePeen. Really.
🙂
Tip 9: Don’t Try Too Hard
No one else cares how high your influence score is on Twitter. If you continually follow others, then unfollow them after they follow you back, to get yourself up to a 1 followed for every 10 followed ratio, you need a new hobby. Twitter is not Farmville. Follow the folks you find interesting, and don’t worry about who is following you or how many more people are following you than you follow. That’s all pretty shallow and meaningless.
Tip 10: Don't be a Drama Llama
Don't have a twitfit whenever someone unfollows you. Don't twitterflame everyone you unfollow. Don't tell anyone who disagrees with you on a topic that they are stupid morons for having a different opinion. Don't flog your blog by RTing yourself 8 times for every blog post. And please disregard those blog traffic builder posts that tell you to ask folks to RT your every blog post (it's OK once in a while, for a post that you are passionate about but gets annoying if it's every time.)
Resources for Finding WoW Tweeps to Follow
My favorite way to find new tweeps is via twitter lists of warcraft folks. Here are a few of my favorites, plus my own lists:
- @Oddcraft/wow-peoples
- @psynister/wow-tweeps
- @KirinKouki/worldofwarcrafters
- @BlogAzeroth/blog-azeroth-bloggers
- @valkyrierisen/warcrafters
- @aoirselvar/azerothians
- @_anea/wow-bloggers
- @anexxia/warcraft-bloggers
- @anexxia/citizens-of-azeroth
You can also use Listorious or We Follow to find WoW tweeps, or even the new Follow suggestion functionality on twitter. Unfortunately, the latter will often keep showing you the same folks over and over, which makes it less compelling in my POV.
Let me know in the comments if I missed any of your pet peeve twittiquette items.
Tip 9 is something that really gets on my nerves.. I’ve had the same person follow me and unfollow me about 4 times in the past couple of weeks, don’t think they’re getting the hint, I’m not going to follow somebody who does that, or whose entire Twitfeed is Cataclysm spoilers and bumping their blog. I use Twitter for conversations and interesting people, I like people who post their latest blog posts on Twitter but if it’s all they post, I’m not going to bother because that’s what RSS feeds are for.
^this.
I considered going to 11 tips to include one about not posting spoilers in Twitter but was not up for arguing abotu that today.
;p
I have a wow list as well as an IRL friends list…and a celeb list, and a personas list (for fictional Twitter accounts), and even a wowrealms that just has the Twitter accounts of the realms I play on, so I can easily tell when the realms come back up. Though, I admit, I utilize lists more so I can organize columns in HootSuite/TweetDeck better.
I’ve thought about #1, but I keep dismissing it since I consider WoW my hobby, thus it’s kinda part of who I am. I try not to totally spam all WoW all the time, but it happens off and on. I won’t hate you if you unfollow me for a day or even forever.
For #2, I love Anea to death, but GAWD CHOOSE ONE ALREADY. I see icons before I read names, and it always throws me for a loop of “who the flip is that?” whenever I see a new icon. Every once in a while is okay, just…geez…keep one for a while before you switch.
What kind of drives me nuts are the people who have both a WoW account and a personal account (and I follow both of them) only to see them post the EXACT SAME THING in both accounts AT THE SAME TIME so that you see the same tweet twice.
Yes I could unfollow one of the accounts, but as you said above, it is neat getting to learn a bit about their other side of life.
I’m guilty of #1, but I’m probably not going to change it. If people are that annoyed when I tweet about my ant invasion or my poetry, they can unfollow me. I’ve unfollowed people for pettier reasons. lol.
#4 I had to learn; thankfully I’m a quick learner. I check out everyone who follows me now and scroll through a page of tweets before I decide whether or not to follow them.
#7 I just couldn’t #FF my whole list; I tend to skim over #FF when I’m reading tweets. That’s why I came up with using randomizers to pick 2 or 3 from the list. I know it’s not everyone’s idea of a good #FF, but it works for me!
#8 There are two people on Twitter who never ever respond to me. Ever. They’ll pose a question or a thought, I’ll respond to it, and…nothing. I stopped replying to their tweets. Every now and then they’ll tweet something I’m really interested in and I’ll respond, and then I remember why I stopped @-ing them in the first place.
#9 I didn’t even know you could look at those kind of statistics. I’m such a noob. lol.
Good post! 😀
I did #1 once I realized I had the RL friends who didn’t care about the foodie stuff or the WoW. So yes, now, I have 3 twitter accounts, and feel like it works a lot better. And I am also a huge user of lists. LOVE them for keeping track of the folks I don’t want to miss out on reading.
#2 ;p
I keep the same one for my WoW acct b/c I love the drawing my friend Norm made me. Esp since she server transferred and we don’t hear from her so much now.
That is a pet peeve of mine as well. I try very hard to not do that. See also why it is usually not a good idea to auto facebook all your tweets. Then I never know where best to reply.
#7 I loved the day you had Cyn and I together for your #FF. 🙂 that rocked.
#9 check out twitalyzer.com — it can be addictive! I think some folks must get obsessed with it tbh. Or they are just trying to create and flip an acct for cash. Which is creepy and weird.
Oh! And as for #8, I am right there with you. It got old fast, and I think I unfollowed most of those folks. I don’t need to prop up an ego of someone only looking to hear themselves talk. >.<
I really don’t mind the bio thing, I usually wind up getting more from someone’s blog than their twitter bio anyway. Of course for the non-blogger I do like to know they are a warcraft player
Haha, we should compare notes sometime. 😛
Also, the one with you and Cyn was perfect. The word was “style;” how could I choose anyone else?!
If everyone had a blog they wouldn’t need bios for sure!
🙂
I follow a good # of WoW bloggers, but more folks who aren’t, which I suppose makes sense. The bloggers tend to be more chatty tho overall as a group.
I mentioned it so much a while back that I’ve given up asking people to contain their spoilers. At least if it’s on their blog with Cataclysm in the header it’s my own fault if I see it, the problem is, the things I want to avoid most are the things that people don’t see as spoilers. The small flavour changes, and the appearances of things, and so on.
I might do a post about why I like to avoid spoilers, less as a “please stop it” because I’ve asked that, just because I guess some people might not know.. wording fails me today.
I do think on the whole people post spoilers because they don’t think. They don’t think that others might want to experience something first hand for themselves in its entirety. Or they don’t think that anyone else hasn’t already done it. People seem to post many things without using the brain/mouth/fingers filter.
It is nothing short of a miracle I didn’t have the WotLK fight spoiled for me in its entirety. (I was only partially spoiled, and it wasn’t the part I would have been most annoyed about having ruined for me.)