Early on in my Twitter career I made a relatively large cock up. Big for me anyway, as although I swear like a truck driver I would never intentionally want to upset someone. Or, I think about it, decide it's a good idea and say it anyway, and then am immediately sorry afterwards and berate myself for weeks (it's the Gemini in me).
So one sunny Saturday morning I was in our Chelsea boutique and an old work friend (from my marketing days) stopped by to have a coffee with me. Being late by nature I wasn't there when she arrived and so she passed the time chatting to the Donna Ida girls in the shop while she waited (not shopping I might add). During that time she casually mentioned to them that she had helped me write the Donna Ida business plan, which was, in short, a big fat lie.
I don't even remember showing it to her when it was finished, at 4am one morning with me panting and sagging over my laptop saying "thank the LORD!!". The Donna Ida business plan is a tome I am very proud of, as not having the first clue how to write a business plan I had whiled away many many weeks and sleepless nights on it, spinning it into a stratospheric work of a few hundred pages. So chunky in fact I'm sure my eventual investors just flicked through to the financials and decided yay or nay.
This nugget of information was delightfully imparted to me after I returned from the coffee date and put me into such a mood that I was breathing fire for several hours afterwards. I should have known then to tuck my phone away into a safe place. It was at this time that a fashion/beauty blogger that I had got to know a little bit on twitter tweeted that a minor celebrity was annoyed that she had more followers on twitter than him. I replied to her that I couldn't believe that said minor celebrity was still milking his 15 minutes of fame all these years later and I was astonished that he was on twitter anyway.
She replied saying "I don't know quite how to tell you this, but he's my husband". Cue my immediate reeling horror and a thousand DMs (and just one public tweet apologising profusely) begging her forgiveness. She eventually demurred and said it was ok, as long as I didn't do it again. Duh! I'm short tempered, not stupid. So from that day forward, I have tweeted with caution. Quite a bit of caution. I love twitter, but you have to tweet like it's a very public diary. Tweets are essentially your own private ramblings played out on the world stage and I like my stage to be free of blood. Here are my three golden rules for twitter:
1)Make sure you can spell. If you can't, keep it simple.
2)Don't swear, unless they are fun non sweary words like 'boobs'.
3)Don't get dragged into an argument on twitter. So entertaining for everyone else but so toe curling when recalling it afterwards. Just move onto the next, more friendly tweet instead.