Tanner Hobin

How Not to be a Self Promoting Tweet Stealing Poser

Posted on December 10th, 2009 under Social Media Marketing. | 5 Comments

The following is based on actual events. The profiles have been blacked out to maintain the focus of the message. Kids, DON’T steal tweets and pose as the original tweeter.

Whether it’s what you are doing or what someone else is doing, at its core Twitter is all about sharing between people. The more valuable the information you share the more valuable your tweets become to potential followers. The better your info, the more of an authority you become on the topic of your Tweets. So let’s review:

Sharing Valuable Information = Topic Authority

This connection between valuable information and authority is magnified through re-tweets (RT). That is, if a follower finds great value in your original tweet, they will in turn re-tweet the original tweet expanding your reach to potential new followers. At this point, giving credit to the original tweeter is good form. Without proper credit given, the original tweeter is essentially disconnected from the tweet and the true sharing opportunity is lost. Let’s review the proper way to give credit.

1. If the tweet was already posted:
   
2. If the tweet has not been posted and the user has a profile:
   
3. If the tweet has not been posted and there is no user profile: In this case it’s safe to say that since there is no profile to give credit to, it is not necessary to provide an association between the shared content and the person responsible for creating it. This is a rare situation and could prove as an opportunity to introduce the person to Twitter.

Bad Twitter-er

Posing as the original publisher, though helpful to your authoritativeness, is not only selfish it’s downright stealing. To put it straight, no one likes a content thief. To better understand how not to be a self promoting tweet stealing poser, let’s review a bad tweet.

The bottom line is…

• Give credit!!!
• Find out if the person’s content you are about to share has a Twitter profile so credit can be given.
• Don’t add a self promotional link pointing to your own content after sharing some one else’s content. It devalues your message and clouds your intentions.