Step 4: make friends

You may wish to make ‘friends’ on a third party web page. It’s good Twitter etiquette to follow people back when they follow you. Having an imbalance between ‘following’ and ‘follower’ figures can result in poor Twitter reputation and grading on third party Twitter sites like Twittergrader. However, you should check all friends carefully before you approve them. Look at their profiles first. If you have any doubts about whether you should approve a friend, discuss it with the Web Team.

If you want to make friends with an organisation (eg a company or a political campaign), bear in mind that this is likely to give the impression that the University is endorsing the organisation. Once accepted, some friends can change from an innocuous friend or group into porn or gambling spammers, so it's worth keeping an eye on who you follow.

'Retweet' & 'like'

You may choose to quote or ‘retweet’ a selection of a friend's content. This is very unlikely to be a problem when you are retweeting a colleague’s tweet or link, but consider the risk that retweeting third-party content may appear to be an endorsement of the original author’s point of view.

The same can be said of 'liking' a Facebook post or comment.

Next step: monitor.