Last Friday I touched on the importance of quality tweets, as well as the danger of straying into potentially divisive subjects when you, the author, should be focused on bringing people together. Today, we’ll wrap up this look at questionable Twitter habits with two other types of problematic tweets.

Again, a disclaimer: at the time of this post (April 16, 2012) I checked to make sure these Twitter handles were not in use. That said, I can’t control Twitter signups in the future. Similarly, I’m not trying to single out or insult anyone. This is just constructive feedback.

Let’s get to it:

@FlyingComedian: What did one ski masked owl say to the other? “I can’t tell whooooo you are.”

Did this joke make you cringe?

Followers of @FlyingComedian will fall into one of two camps. Either they’ll enjoy his tweets, or they’ll become ambivalent.

Certainly the occasional joke harms nothing, and reminds followers that it’s not all about the promotion. But be careful of posting only humor. Yes, I’ve seen authors do it.

This baffles me. Why do some authors establish accounts for promotion purposes, then never mention their work at all, and never take the trouble to hashtag something; anything?

Here I am, a hypothetical follower — in an ideal scenario — following @FlyingComedian, and chuckling along with his jokes. But I can’t remember what his fiction is about, or even what genre it is. And he can’t count on me being motivated enough to pull up his profile.

Is that what @FlyingComedian really wants?

Have you ever bought a book from an author tweeting humor? What did they tend to do, if anything, different from this approach that worked for you?

Here’s another type of tweet that I see far too many of:

@QuotingAnnie: We have nothing to fear but owl ski masks. – Smith Smitherson.

It pains me to bring this type of post up, because there are so many nice people on Twitter that use these.

That said: Don’t use auto-generated quotes from BufferApp or any of the other major apps.

This goes back to the same problem @OneWayGirl was having in the first article. When someone sends these out, they’re not really connecting. Everyone who is familiar with the apps knows all they did was just punch up a suggested quote to ping all their followers. And the number of people familiar with these apps is significant.

My Twitter feed is a precious thing. I like people that post relevant, interesting content, useful links, network well with others, and don’t tweet filler.

An auto-quote is useless filler. I’m sorry, but it really is. In radio, they might have called auto-quotes “dead air”.

There’s other kinds of filler, too. Care to touch on some that you see?

Summing Up:

I could have brought other pet peeves to the party as well, but by this point I think we’re all on the same page. There’s no need to bring up all the bad tweet types because a) you didn’t come here to read a book and b) the core point is why these don’t work.

Remember the three C’s of Twitter: Collaboration, Connectivity, and Community. Any tweet that steps outside those boundaries, or moves counter to them, is one that does nothing to enhance your use of the tool to accomplish these objectives.

Are there any other tweeting habits you find counter-productive? Is there an author that lost you as a follower for a different reason than one listed here? I’d love to hear it in your comments below.

Oh, and once again, here’s my obligatory plug for my own Twitter account:

Follow @JCGauthor

Thanks so much for visiting and reading this article.

Stay tuned.