Twitter can be a useful tool for contacting new clients and building stronger relationships with current clients, but the laws of the medium must still be followed!

Twitter is a wonderfully fun slice of the social media landscape, and one that allows you to reach out to potential clients while reinforcing your relationships with existing clients.

Yet, as anyone who has spent 10 minutes with the site knows, it’s one rife with inconceivable errors and users who seem to have no idea how to use the site. To ensure that you do not fall into any of those traps, here are five laws of Twitter you should follow.

The Laws of the Land of Twitter

1. Hashtag abuse: Hashtags are searchable terms within tweets, the words with a “#” sign placed in front of them. When you use a hashtag, that keyword will be searchable when Twitter users look for specific tweets. As useful as that may seem, be careful that you don’t overdo your use of hashtags. Though it may seem, in principle, a good idea to make your tweets super searchable, they’re an absolute headache to read, and you’ll quickly alienate your followers. A good example:

2. Stoopid Errors: Simply – don’t make them. It’s one thing when high schoolers tweeting about the Jonas Brothers make spelling mistakes, but you’re using your Twitter account as a professional! Double check all your posts before sending them out.

3. Images Without Captions: This one is particularly befuddling. Twitter allows you to write captions for every photo you upload, yet we constantly come across tweets with images…and no explanation of what it is we’re looking at. It’s not funny or mysterious; it’s annoying!

For example, what the heck does this mean?

4. Goofy Profile Pictures: This is another curiosity. If your Twitter account is intrinsically linked to you personally (and not an alter ego or pseudonym), than why  not use a real picture of yourself as your profile picture? That may sound like the most commonsense point of this entire article, but you wouldn’t believe how many profiles we see that bare the name of a human being, yet feature photos of cats, incomprehensible logos or Internet memes in the place of a face. How would potential clients view such a profile?

5. Incomplete Tweets: Finally, make sure your tweets are complete and readable! We don’t know why some users copy and paste 500-word listing descriptions in their tweets, but they seem to forget that on Twitter, you only have 140 characters to spare! Be succinct, be direct and don’t go over that limit. A sad case:

In the end, you should keep one main thing in mind: WWCT? What Would Clients Think?