New to Twitter

[Judge Mental]

I started Tweeting this week (I have a big project about to need publicity next week) and I'd like advice on how to avoid being an obnoxious asshole. (On Twitter that is; IRL, it's way too late for any help on that score.) For example, I just publicized one little bit of my work to various people I thought might be interested in it by tweeting them individually (copying and pasting the same description and link to each of them.) Then I noticed that each of my tweets show up on my home page as separate items--is everyone of my followers (not so many, yet) seeing this barrage of tweets? Are the guys I tweeting to seeing the repetitions if they follow each other? Can someone tell me how twitter works, exactly, or link me to someplace that does?

[severe delays]

You're already being an obnoxious asshole. Don't spam people individually about your project. 1) You'll be reported for spam and 2) If they follow you then they already know what you're tweeting. Just tweet about it and those who follow you will see it in their timelines.

I gotta say, leaving this sort of advertising with only a week to go is a little shortsighted. It's like opening a shop in the middle of nowhere then expecting people to turn up to your big sale. There's simply not enough time for you to build reputation.

All that said, if you want a good general guide to Twitter then @MooseAllain has an excellent one storifiedhere. If you want an idea of how to do a corporate account well then take a look at @betfairpoker @WstonesOxfordSt - lots of silliness, lots of engaging with people, lots of daft tweets that get retweeted by followers and thus a HUGE audience for their occasional business-related tweet.


ETA: In answer to your question, yes, if I go to your "homepage" then I'll see every message you sent. But mostly I'm not going to go there, I'm just going to rely on what pops up in my timeline.

[Judge Mental]

Thanks. That MooseAllain link was helpful, answering many of my newbie questions.

[severe delays]

He's very much worth following, not only for that but for his humour.

[Judge Mental]

As long as I'm asking newbie questions about publicizing this event, I'm also trying to send out an e-mail with a semi-personalized invitation to about a 100 people in my Outlook account, BUT: I see where I'd type their names in the TO: section, and I see a CC: section below that, but no BCC: option. Anyone know Outlook well enough to tell me if should look elsewhere?

[severe delays]

Click on the little address book and you should get all options. You can change your settings so bcc is there by default but I forget how. Hit f1 for more useful help.

[Judge Mental]

New Twitter question, of the etiquette type: someone on Twitter keeps putting links in his tweets that are to a pay-to-view site. Is this cool? Bad manners? Forbidden? I don't see the point, but he claims he has lots of followers and he's notifying THEM when his blog updates. Me, if I'm paying to view a blog, I'm checking all the time for updates anyway.

[severe delays]

He's a dirty spammer. Feel free to either block him or report him for spam (which also blocks him).

A lot of accounts are of the spambot type. Their bio is often very similar. Marketing director, loves coffee, anything about social media, anything with a link to an ad in the bio is a dead giveaway.