How to avoid being annoying on Twitter and Facebook

As in face-to-face discourse, there are common gaffes and outright taboos.

As in face-to-face discourse, there are common gaffes and outright taboos

Where there are social networks, there will be people be who abuse them­—and you certainly don’t have to go far to find them. Just rewind back Friday, June 18, for example: Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff littered Twitter with tweets announcing the firing-squad execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner, which stirred up just as much controversy as the actual execution itself.

Social media missteps like this happen more frequently than we care to blog on, and in a time where communicators can’t get away with avoiding the conversation, there’s one question that’s going to keep surfacing (other than what’s going on with the World Cup): Where is the line drawn between interesting tidbits and overly annoying posts? So, in an effort to help answer this trending topic, I’ve pinpointed three of the most common ailments that strike social media newcomers.

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