One of the best, and most important, things about social media is that there are no hard and fast rules. Social media is what you make of it, and there's no right or wrong way to use it.

Social Media Rules of Engagement

However, some social networks are better-suited for certain activities than others. Twitter has more than 288 million monthly active users who post around 500 million tweets each day. The platform has been around for nearly eight years, but many people still don't understand Twitter or how to effectively use it.

Twitter can be surprisingly fruitful and at the same time mind-numbingly wasteful. As you scroll through your feed, reading breaking news updates, it can be jolting to suddenly see a completely non-related tweet, such as a haiku about someone's breakfast.

And that's OK. Twitter is designed to be a global, online town square, and if you want to make the most of the service you have to accept everything -- the good, bad and mundane -- that comes with it. Many of the things that make Twitter seem terrible at times are the same things that make it great. If you're not getting value out of Twitter, you're probably not following the right people. You also need to remember that Twitter is a two-way street, and you should be just as thoughtful about how you represent yourself on the platform as you are about the people you choose to follow.

Read on for our Twitter rules of engagement.

Don't Create Tweetstorms

Tweetstorms are a relatively new Twitter phenomenon, created mostly by academic types, billionaires and people who just love to see themselves tweet. Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters for good reason, and brevity is a thing of beauty. It's something you should cherish about Twitter, not circumvent.

It can be tough to narrow a thought, idea or joke down to 140 characters, but that's part of the fun of Twitter. There are plenty of things that can't be said in 140 characters, and those are what blogs, pens and paper are for.

If you can't say something on Twitter in less than 140 characters, don't say it at all. Sometimes a series of related tweets is warranted, but you should always keep them relevant -- and please don't write sentences that run from one tweet to the next. That's just obnoxious.

Read more here:

7 Things You Should Never Do on Twitter