1. Don’t follow anyone back. I mean anyone. Nope, not a soul. OK, maybe like 50 people, but no more. Just let people follow you. I mean, after all, you are [insert company name here] for crying out loud! Like you have time to follow people!
2. Have a user name, avatar and bio that only reflects the company and doesn’t show the slightest inclination or hint that an actual human is involved anywhere in this account. People love conversing with a logo, yo!
3. Let a bot tweet by simply automatically posting your RSS feed. Because, you know, people couldn’t just subscribe to that or anything. Or if you must tweet, just tweet at Twitter. Don’t reply @ other people on Twitter. Because that would almost be like a conversation. Eww!
4. Only promote your company. Only post about your company. You’re there to promote the company, after all, right?
5. Create the account and then disappear. People love to follow Twitter profiles that haven’t updated in weeks. So engaging.

If you don’t want to be a Twitter dweeb, just understand this. Social networking is not the same as advertising. This is a conversation. People don’t have conversations with companies, they have conversations with people at companies. Behave accordingly, and you will do just fine.

Just to solidify my point, I would like to offer up a couple of examples of corporations tweeting, both doing it well and doing it poorly.

Twitter businesses doing it poorly:

• Twitter – I can’t resist, really. I love Twitter and all, but this is just lame. What are they doing wrong? Following 28, followed by 28,000 first of all. Also, their tweets are essentially updates. This is really just a glorified RSS feed with updated. Jack and Biz are only slightly better on Twitter’s behalf. Although I have to say, I actually got a reply from Twitter once. It was kind of startling, but someone is reading that account at least.
• Etsy – It pains me to mention them, because I totally love Etsy. And I do like the conversational tone here, and the fact they follow some of their followers back. But this Twitter profile only tweets about Etsy, never replies @ another user, and has only 29 updates. Considering Etsy is all about the personal experience when you’re making a purchase, I sure wish I saw an Etsy official’s face and saw some personal tweets here, or even links to Etsy sellers’ personal blogs or something.

Twitter businesses doing it right:

• Zappos – Following Zappos’ CEO is entertaining and engaging. He has posted silly pictures of himself, and has a very approachable manner. I would love to see him @ more, but he is following more than 12,000 people (even more than the 10,000-some following him). He’s making friends and increasing awareness of Zappos.
• JamesatBabyspot -I like a whole bunch of things about James’ account. For one thing, I know his name. I also still know his business because he worked that right into his user name. He tweets about this and that, and he tweets often. He does almost as many posts @ someone as he does not. I wish his face was his avatar. Otherwise, he’s doing it right. He’s networking, and he’s spreading the gospel about his product.

Do you guys have more examples of good and bad corporate tweeters? Share in the comments. And do you follow entities and corporations? For example, I follow woot because, well, it’s woot. I’ll forgive them for only posting the latest woot. But they definitely are not part of the conversation.

And then there are companies and corporations. They so want to hang with us (especially we mommy bloggers who, they’ve suddenly noticed, spend a shitload of money to feed and entertain ourselves and our spoiled children, and we influence other moms who spend a shitload of money). They so want to be our friends.

But we don’t want to be their friends. For one thing, they are too obvious. They scream, “Be my friend!!!! Please!” Or, translated, “Buy my crap! Please!” They’re just, well, I have to say it. They’re just annoying.

And here’s the funniest thing. They do all this, but they don’t want to get too personal. Oh, no. That makes them very uncomfortable.

So they do things like have profiles that have no face, just a logo. Or they have social web accounts that are named for the company, and not a person. They join social bookmarking sites, and then just submit their own site. What a spaz!

And it’s understandable. For decades, maybe centuries, the concept that is normally accepted is that business and personal are separate. We’re programmed with that.

Those days are over. It’s all mingled together, and it overlaps. If you want business, you’d better get personal.

I can’t be friends with a company. Sorry. I can be friends with someone who WORKS FOR a company. I was pretty impressed when I spotted a couple of Graco company bloggers on Twitter. You can follow Lindsay Lebresco and Melissa Parlaman. Initially, when I saw they were official Graco bloggers, I actually cringed.

But then I visited the Graco Baby Blog. Wow, do they get it. I mean, wow. Go visit that blog. Yes, it is a corporate blog, but it could easily be a multi-author parenting blog. The moms and dads here talk about real life, including an incredibly moving recent post about a Graco employee’s wife giving birth to a NICU baby:

I wanted to share a story about my youngest daughter, Mia Erin Langmaid. I am the development manager for US new car seats at Graco Children’s Products, and I’ve worked with infant car seats and premature babies on and off for the last 3 ½ years. I would never in a million years have thought that my wife and I would have a premature baby. Especially since our two older children, Alex (6) and Kylie (4) were both full term, healthy babies.

Corporations? You listening? This is how you engage your customers. The blog still ties into the product, but not in that annoying in-your-face, TV commercial translated into social networking kind of way. This way is more subtle, but just as effective if not more so.

This is how you use social networking. Get personal.