Twitter is becoming much more mainstream as time goes on. I do not mean to say that these celebrities are mainstream, but their audiences are. Since Oprah joined Twitter, you can be sure that hundreds of thousands of “stay-at-home moms” across America have begun tweeting. There are of course endless debates surrounding this topic and whether this is a good or bad development, but one thing’s for sure, there are now many new people joining Twitter who have no idea what they are doing.
1: Do not use the following words in your bio, no matter how much you think they will attract followers:
-Social Media Expert: I think it is safe to say these are the three most annoying words on Twitter. What is a Social Media Expert can someone please explain to me? I am of the opinion that very few people can honestly call themselves experts in the field. The remaining 99% are people who have been using Twitter for a few months, have a few hundred followers, and are as much of an expert on social media as I am on Yoga (never done Yoga).
-Guru: The same pretty much applies to the word Guru. Unless your name is Jeff Pulver or possibly Kevin Rose, and you write that you are a Web 2.0 guru, you can rest assured you will not see me on your followers list. Humility is the key. -Make Money Online: People are mostly on Twitter to participate in dialog. People who write these words in their bio are just like email spammers, and beyond the annoyance, and the fact that they are single handedly ruining Twitter, they are also doing something immoral and wrong. I can safely say that without exception, these words should never be in anyone’s Twitter bio.
-Affiliate Marketing: Now this is a tricky one. There is nothing inherently wrong with affiliate marketing. It is a legitimate way of making money online. However, to put it in proportion, Viagra is also a legitimate aphrodisiac, that does not mean I would ever open an email with the word Viagra in it. So too, most people on Twitter would not follow someone with the words Affiliate Marketing in their profile.
-Increase your Followers: If you are telling me ways to increase my followers, you obviously have very little confidence in my intellectual ability or at the very best, my social skills. I do not want to be told who to follow and as one of my Twitter mentors told me in response to a question posted on Twitter, I do not want to follow random people. I want to follow people that interest me, and the basic assumption is that the people they conduct dialog with, will also interest me. Thank you
Ahuva (follow her, she is the cream of the crop.)
2:
Do not ONLY answer the question “What Are You Doing” in your tweets: Maybe this is how Twitter started, but I think we can all agree that nobody wants to hear when you are eating, when you are going to sleep, and when (yes this has been tweeted on occasion) you are going to the bathroom. Now let me clarify; I am not saying that it is unacceptable to talk about what you are eating for lunch, and even
post a picture of it, this kinda thing makes Twitter interesting and fun. However, I think if that is ALL a person tweets about, they will end up with very few followers, who might be true food enthusiasts. A guiding rule when tweeting is tweet things that would interest you if tweeted by others. In fact, I think it is time to change the Twitter box from “What are you Doing”? to possibly “What Can you Share”? or as a
true social media expert suggested, just a simple “What’s up?”
3: Do not ONLY promote your blog/business in your tweets: Once again, the main word here in “only”. In my humble opinion, there is nothing wrong with sharing your blog posts with your followers. If they follow you, they are apparently interested in your thoughts, and your blog can be viewed as an extension of your tweets, so why not share it? However, just like everything else, all in moderation. If I come across someone’s Twitter timeline and all his tweets start with the word “New blog post”, can you guess what my first action would be?
4
: Do not tweet the same thing more than twice in a day: There are some people on Twitter who I actually look up to and respect, but feel it is OK to tweet the same article ten times throughout the day. Now, there is something to this technique. After all, the people reading it in the morning are generally not the same people reading it in the evening. This is true, but there is one little problem. When you tweet the same article or link many times throughout the day, you are not taking the heavy Twitter addicts into account. There are enough people who will see all those tweets and get annoyed fast. If you MUST tweet the same link more than twice, at least change the lead in sentence. I must give props to yet another one of my Twitter mentors on this tip. Thanks
Ezra.
5:
Do not tweet about your followers more than once a week: OK, here I must stress something. I was an offender of this rule for a little while when I was new to Twitter. I was put in my place by another fellow Twitterer, who by the way, happens to be one of my favorite bloggers. Check out her
Twitter here and her blog
here. So thanks Talia, I still think you need to publish a book from your blog. What I mean to say here is do not tweet things like “I have 5,000 followers, and I really want to get to 6,000, please RT this”. This is really annoying especially if you do it often. It is not the end of the world if you are at 99,999 and you tweet “Free iPhone for my 100,000th follower”, but beyond that, please refrain.
6: Do not tweet exclusively in another language: OK, this one is gonna spark some controversy, and rightfully so. I strongly believe you need to speak the language that most people understand. I am not saying if your mother tongue is Spanish to NEVER tweet in Spanish, I am just saying to be considerate of your followers and the fact that as of today, there are still a lot of applications that only support English text.
7: Do not tweet sensitive/private information: Once again, I am speaking from experience and learning from my mistakes. As recently as yesterday, I tweeted something that was not for certain eyes, while thinking “Eh, they wont see it anyway”. Mistake, big mistake! Tweets now show up in Google searches and anyone can easily access your tweets. So if you want to keep something private, probably not the best idea to share it on the fastest growing social network on the Web. Additionally, and I am not going to elaborate on this, being as it is a very controversial topic, and I am actually not completely sure what I believe, but I do think Twitter should be treated like a work place. Just like you would not share extreme political views, sexist, or offensive views of any kind at an office event, so to Twitter. It is all about sensitivity. I am sure a lot of you disagree, feel free to share your opinion in the comments.
8:
Do not Auto DM people who follow you: Well, this has got to be one of the bigger annoyances in the Twittersphere, thank the Lord, many of my friends taught me how to
disable this inconvenience. If someone followed you, they did not do it for you, they did it for them, so no need to thank them. Do not DM them saying “Nice to meet you and thank you for following”. I get one of those messages and you better prepare a goodbye reply too.
9: Do not Auto Follow: Once again, just my humble opinion. Unfortunately, there are too many bots, spam accounts, and just annoying people on Twitter. Just because someone follows you, does not necessarily mean you have to or want to follow them back. In fact, I would say that maybe 30%-40% of the people that followed me over the past month were real people, with quality tweets on topics that interest me. Follow people that interest you, otherwise you will end up with an uncontrollable amount of people in your stream, which will eventually detract from your ability to use Twitter effectively.
10: Do not consistently make spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistakes in your tweets:This is consistent with my general philosophy on Twitter specifically and social media in general. Just like I would not follow a person who could not be bothered to upload a picture to his/her profile, post a bio, or tweet at least a few times, so to I am not quick to follow someone who constantly makes elementary mistakes in their tweets. Now, I know this sounds a little harsh, but I think your followers deserve that extra effort. I am not saying you need to be a professional English writer, but c’mon, what interface does not include a spell check? Use it and be careful how you tweet.
11: Do not use Twitter like you use Facebook: I think it is an acceptable practice to check your Facebook once a day, week, or even month. Twitter needs more effort. It is true that you can use Twitter effectively even if you only tweet once a day. However, in my opinion, if you really want to maximize the tremendous potential that is Twitter, you need to keep your audience on their toes. Keep your followers interested.
