Twitter is a deceptively simple business marketing tool, until you make a Twitter faux pas. With any social scene or media site there are some unwritten rules, and if you cross the line then you may well find yourself losing followers. Below are five Twitter mistakes that you may make that cause you to lose followers and respect. Have you made any of them?
1 – You tweet in capital letters. In the worlds of forums, blogs and social media, writing the whole sentence in capital letters is considered shouting. It also screams of desperation and suggests to your followers that you are self-centered and don’t care about their tweets. This rule also applies to Facebook and emails, by the way.
2 – You promote your own products or services every two minutes. Twitter is not a selling tool. People are not going to buy your product just because they came across your tweet. Twitter is about sharing useful information, not promoting your sale pages. Don’t tweet every single product on your site, one after the other. You will labeled as a spammer and lose followers. You may be able to send out a lot of promotion tweets and not lose many followers, but only if you don’t make the next mistake.
3 – You promote ONLY your own content. In real life we share conversations with people as well as pass on hints, tips and any good recommendations that we have seen. The same applies to Twitter. Retweet other people’s content if you think it is good enough for your followers to see. You will gain followers as Twitter is about building your brand within your niche and becoming known as an authority figure. Once people see that you are tweeting their content, they will return the favor.
4 – You are not aware of the world around you. The recent tsunami in Japan provoked some very strong reactions on Twitter. While news was breaking, some people were still sending tweets to their own content. To be fair a number of these tweets were scheduled; however, these people were seen as heartless and in some cases, ignorant. If a major event happens in the world, the first thing you should be doing is canceling your scheduled tweets.
5 – You fail to follow people back. People want to be followed because that’s the only way their content is going to be seen. If you gain followers but fail to follow them back, eventually many of them will unfollow you. Unless you are a celebrity or major brand, you are going to have to follow back.
Have you seen anything else on Twitter that just makes you head off to find the Un-follow button?