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I’m a friendly guy. I don’t go looking for trouble, and if someone wants to hurl an insult or two my way, I let it roll off my back.
But …
I know Chris Brogan has a nice Twitter etiquette guide online for you, but let me add a few item concerning how not to make friends on Twitter:
1) You can follow and not follow anyone you want. But, if you’re going to make a judgement call about someone and not follow them, don’t send them anything. You never know who is a blogger, reporter, or someone with a microphone looking to use it.
2) Don’t hesitate to block people who send you negative messages.You know how I deal with cyberbullying, and the odds are if they’re that quick to make a judgement about you, you’re better off not doing business with them.
3) You can and should call out people who treat others poorly as long as you did nothing to incite the problem. I encourage this because it warns others in your network of potential people to avoid networking with.
4) BUT! Look carefully before you write people off for a single comment. Look at their profile and website before replying. Have they sent negative comments to other people? Have you tried to communicate with this person about their comment to see if there might be a misunderstanding? I didn’t. That’s a mistake I’d like to see you avoid.
I had a great talk with David, who was the one that sent me a DM that set off this post, about this post and his work as a web analytics consultant. So although our initial exchange was rocky, I’m happy we had a chance to communicate and learn we’re very similar people with very similar goals. You can see David and I patching things up in the comment section below.
The Lesson
So, make sure you look before you leap if you do get a negative message, but don’t hesitate to block and then warn your network if it’s not a misunderstanding,
