Twitter for dummies. Or something like that.

Part of my current job is to write tweets for clients. Pretty simple stuff, right? Read some content, know the client's "voice" and compose a few tweets. Not exactly brain surgery.

And, I'm not exactly new to this whole Twitter thing.
In fact I've been tweeting since February 22, 2008.

For those of you keeping track at home, that's FOUR YEARS, 6 months, 1 week, 9 hours, 7 minutes and 56 seconds (as of August 31, 2012 at 2:57 pm ET).

So imagine my complete and total frustration annoyance today when I received an email where someone essentially tried to school me in the proper usage of Twitter.

In part it read:

Twitter only allows 140 characters, inclusive of links and hashtags. Tweets need to be created to be punchy and direct, saying as much as possible in the shortest space. Every word matters, so articles like "a" and "the" should be skipped when possible. Think of it as a form of shorthand communication.

Also, hashtags need to be targeted based on what you are trying to get people to search for….

Alternatively, you can create your own hashtag to start a trended discussion  - something that really speaks to what [the client] is trying to say and also sets them apart as the leader of the conversation and not just a small voice.

Whew. I'm so happy I received this email because to be honest, I had no idea how Twitter worked. I have obviously been doing it all wrong for the past four years. I sure hope those 30,955 tweets I've sent out weren't all bad. And to my 1,921 followers... I'm so sorry that I suck at Twitter. Forgive me. Please.

Anywho...

In all seriousness, this really makes me angry.

I'm OK with someone giving me CONSTRUCTIVE criticism - and I'll take that. But to think that she should give me "Twitter for Dummies" in an email is ludicrous. 

I don't need someone to tell me how Twitter works. I've been doing it long enough (and well enough) to know what works and what doesn't. I didn't just start tweeting yesterday. I've been to enough social media conferences and read enough social media news (um, hi...DAILY) to know what I'm doing.

And with that, I'm going to go tweet about the #fullmoon and how it's making people #crazy.