No one likes to be spammed – yet so many people do it, without even realizing it.

Twitter, FaceBook, E-mail  They are all susceptible to being used as spamming tools by average people and businesses alike, and most don’t even have a clue that they are doing it..

These little tips should help keep you on everyone’s friend lists, and minimize your perception as being a spammer.

Even though these tips are specific to Twitter, the same applies to most other forms of social media that you can find online.

1. Remember the “social” in social media.  Build relationships. Don’t blast out your sales message as the only tweet you ever send.  I try to tweet about one sales message, for every 20 relationship building tweets.

2. I’ve found things like “quotation books” to be a great source of relationship building.  They get a sense of who I am through the types of quotes I like.   I also send out breaking news, hopefully before anyone else knows about it, so that I’ve viewed as a valuable and reliable source of information.  Send out interesting websites that are pertinent to who you are, or what your business does.

3. Follow every one that follows you. Try to keep your follower to following ratio pretty close to 1:1.  If you are following a lot of people , and no one is following you, you can look like a spammer as well.

4. Give compliments to other Tweeters about their tweets, or profile pic, or even their website – flattery works wonders, but don’t over do it.

5. Tweet like you talk, just modify it to fit into 140 characters.  Do you answer the phone with, “Have I got a bargain for you, and if you act now, I’ll throw in another for free!” – of course not.  So talk natural – whatever that happens to be for you.

6. Limit your tweets to a reasonable number per hour.  If you Tweet every 10 seconds all the time, no one has a chance to figure out who you are.. and if you slipped a sales message in there, they won’t see it anyhow.

7. If you choose to sell something, do it mildly.  The ole “Selling without selling” clause certainly applies here.

8. Answer questions that apply to your industry.  If you’re a realtor, do a Twitter search for things like ‘real estate’, ‘mortgage’ , ‘house’, etc – and see if you can answer questions – without trying to sell them anything.  Just plain ole advice goes a long way with reputation.

9. Post a blog article occasionally that gives great information about you and your industry. –

10. Remember ‘Social’ and ‘Reputation’ take time – lot’s of it.  Get out there and have fun, leave the marketing as a secondary activity.

Moderation is always the key. Act natural, and you’ll do fine.

There are hundreds of Twitter Etiquette guides out there, as well as guides for every other social media.

This guide is not a complete, but does address some of the major ‘anti-spam’ twitter rules to be active and be loved.

If you have other ideas or suggestions to add to this twitter guide, leave them in the comments below.  It can only help the Twitter community.