25 Terrible Things You Should Never Include In Your Twitter Bio

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By Lauren Dugan Comments

We all have our own pet peeves when it comes to Twitter. And they’re usually pretty subjective: after all, someone’s annoying Twitter spam is another person’s hashtag chat!

This week at AllTwitter HQ we sat down (well, more like we started an email chain) and vented about what really irks us when it comes to what people write in their Twitter bios. And here’s the result: a master list of 25 things you absolutely should never, ever include in your 160-character-or-less bio.

Now, the items on this list are what annoy us – they might be perfectly acceptable to a large portion of the Twitter population, and we’re just bitter! But we don’t think so, because they really do annoy us.

Without further ado, the 25 worst things you can include in your Twitter bio (in no particular order of annoying-ness):

  1. The phrase “social media guru/social media maven/social media ninja” or similar, which, in most cases, shows that you don’t really know what you’re talking about
  2. An over-the-top sales pitch
  3. Cutesy emoticon strings (unless you’re a pre-teen): ~*~*~*~ or ^-^-^-^
  4. “#TeamFollowback”. Ugh.
  5. Calling yourself an “anything” junkie. You know: a tech junkie, fitness junkie, movie junkie…
  6. Likewise, but replace “junkie” with “buff”, “aficionado”, “geek” or any one of a dozen worn words that just means you like something. We get it. You like coffee. Big deal. What does that tell us about how you’re using Twitter?
  7. A #list of #words you #think #deserve to be #hashtagged. #TheyDont
  8. Inside jokes that fewer than 1% of your followers will understand
  9. Spelling mistakes
  10. Grammar mistakes
  11. Punctuation mistakes
  12. Anything that’s cliché (OK, this one might be hard to avoid, but just try to be original, please!)
  13. Writing that you have a “kooky sense of humor” or pointing out that you’re funny at all. If you have to tell us you’re funny, you’re not.
  14. Dishonesty. Seriously, you’re gonna lie about yourself in 160 characters?
  15. Writing “thoughts are my own”, thinking that these four words actually protect you or your company from damage
  16. Curse words (unless that’s who you #*$&in’ are!)
  17. The words “please”, “follow” and “me” together. Even though you’re being polite, asking for followers is a turn-off.
  18. A “laundry list” of things you like, things you find interesting, or just, well, things
  19. keyword-stuffing
  20. Ambiguous and semi-motivational descriptors like “We work to inspire and we inspire good work” – can you be more vague?
  21. Calling yourself a foodie
  22. Excessively quoting someone else. Come on, we want to hear from you in your bio!
  23. Thinking that some part of your bio IS SO IMPORTANT THAT IT DESERVES TO BE CAPS LOCKED
  24. Referring to an accomplishment from two years ago. Have you really done nothing since?
  25. Using “resume-speak” and resorting to a deadly dull, predicable and safe description of yourself – honestly, make any other mistake on this list, but not this one!

What do you think? Do you have any Twitter bio “do nots” to add to this list? Or have we included something that you think doesn’t belong? Feel free to vent about your own Twitter bio nightmares in the comments below!

(image via Shutterstock)
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