Social Media is a new and ever-changing medium with a million and one different rules and strategies. No one does it perfectly (although some may claim they do) and everyone learns at different rates. Because of this, I find myself pretty tolerant of blunders and of people who accidentally break one of the unwritten rules.

That being said, there are a few social media “don’ts” that I find especially irritating, and I would like to take this opportunity to put them out there. Let me know what you think I’ve missed.

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Social Media Don’t #1 – Automatic direct messages on Twitter – You follow me, so I follow you back. Then a few hours later I receive a direct message from you saying, “Hi. thanks for the follow. Read my e-book.” What this message really says is, “Hi, I couldn’t care less about you. I am only on Twitter to rack up followers and to get more people to read my book/visit my site/buy my product. I have very little interest in interacting with you.”

Yea, no thanks. If the whole point of Twitter is two way communication, why, oh why, would you choose to have your first interaction with me be from a Twitter robot? That does not bode well for our future Twitter relationship.

I would much MUCH prefer no response to my follow, than an automated one. And if you do want me to read your e-book, then take the one minute it takes to write me a personal DM. That will go far to help build a relationship and gain my trust. Then, maybe, I’ll read your e-book.

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Social Media Don’t #2 – Streaming your tweets into Facebook - I’m all about efficiency, and I understand the desire to want to simplify the process of updating all of your people. However, I think this is a misguided shortcut. Facebook and Twitter are two extremely different mediums, and in order to be respected on either, it’s best to treat them that way. For most, your Facebook friends are the people you actually know – people you’ve grown up with, or went to college with, or work with now, or dated in high school, etc… Because of this, the majority of status updates are about what users are up to, what they are thinking, or just something random and irrelevant.

Your Twitter followers on the other hand (again, generally speaking) don’t know you and most likely could care less about what you are doing. They are following you to talk with you, to learn from you, and to share ideas with you. They want suggestions, news, great articles, insights and conversation. It is therefore extremely challenging to write a single status update or tweet that speaks to both of these different audiences at once.

There is also the difference in expected frequency of the two sites. On Twitter, if you update 6 times a day, that is completely normal. On Facebook, if you update 6 times a day, you are “that girl.” Don’t be “that girl.”

Plus all those RT, #, @ etc look really dumb when they come through a Facebook stream.

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Social Media Don’t # 3 – Start a Twitter account and immediately begin following 500 people – Most people will not follow you if you don’t have a picture, a history of tweets, a bio and a proportionate amount of followers to following. I’d recommend building out your profile and slowly beginning to tweet. When you are ready to start adding people, go for just a few a day and practice interacting with your new followers. It’s a slow process to grow followers at first and there are no legitimate shortcuts. Sure, if you follow a couple thousand people you may get 300 spam bots to follow you back, but I have to wonder how that’s going to help you moving forward.

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Social Media Don’t # 4 – Ask to be my friend on Facebook if I’ve never met you. I know there are some people who use their Facebook for meeting people, but the vast majority don’t. In fact, I conducted a Twitter poll to see who of my Twitter followers accepts random friend requests on Facebook: 100 percent of them said no. And Facebook itself claims its number one focus is connecting people online who already know each other offline. There are so many other places to connect with people you don’t know (Twitter/Linkedin/email). There’s no need to try and bunch Facebook into that group.

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Social Media Don’t # 5 – Un-follow and re-follow people on Twitter. So many people follow hundreds of people at a time trying to boost their followers. Then, when 90 percent of those people don’t follow them back, they un-follow people, to try and make their numbers look more proportional. Two days later I’ll get an email that X is following me – again. There is nothing more annoying then when the same Twitter user keeps un-following and re-following you. If someone didn’t follow you back the first time, annoying and pestering them is not the way to go. If it is a case where you really think it’s someone who should be following you, send them an @reply and begin a conversation. You could also try re-assessing  your content. Are you only streaming links to your website over and over again? Perhaps that is why people aren’t returning your follow. In short, there are all kind of options that don’t include pestering people.

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In the end, we all use social media differently, but I think it’s important to know the ground rules. So, what do you think? Do these things bother you? Do any of you have any other social media pet peeves?