Things that Sabotage Your Twitter “Marketing”
Twitter is a funny outlet. When it works, it really works. When it fails, you’ll end up having wasted a lot of time.
The thing is, Twitter has been around long enough that it has developed its own unspoken rules and ways of operating. If you are new to it, you might not pick up on these signals right away. Even if you’ve been tweeting for years, you may have been doing it wrong – and that’s not something that anyone wants to hear.
So, before you go any further – AVOID any of the tactics below in your Twitter usage:
Viewing Twitter as Marketing
Don’t tweet ads. Twitter is first and foremost about making your brand feel like a person, so treating the feed as a virtual billboard will deter followers. Tweet advice, comments on current events, and generally “normal” stuff that a person would usually tweet. The humanization of your brand goes a lot further than attempting to traditionally market through a non-traditional venue.
Tweet more than once every half hour
Tweet too much and expect to get un-followed. People tend to have a lot of personalities, brands and people in their Twitter feed, and they don’t want to see your account pop up five times in a row. You can expect to lose followers (or get filtered out) if you clog other users’ feeds.
Tweet less than once a day
In contrast, you also don’t want your account getting buried in users’ feeds. Tweeting less than once a day will deter followers and make your account virtually invisible. Personally, I won’t even follow an account that wasn’t active at least the previous day. No point.
Sync Twitter to Facebook
Facebook and Twitter operate very differently. So, if your tweets are showing up on Facebook or abbreviated Facebook posts on Twitter, you can expect one or both accounts to fail. Treat the two accounts as separate venues, because they are, in fact, completely different. You wouldn’t post a giant tweet on a billboard. You wouldn’t take a Facebook post and throw it in a Youtube video. So, don’t sync your accounts.
Request RTs, Etc.
You can’t beg people to retweet your stuff. You have to make stuff that’s actually worth retweeting. Tweet at least 5 times a day with fun, interesting or otherwise human content, and the user engagement will come naturally.
Mass Following
Don’t follow accounts that you don’t want to see in your feed. First of all – just because you follow someone doesn’t mean that they will follow you. Secondly, Twitter will flag you for following massive amounts of accounts without the intent to actually engage with the user. Thirdly, if you mass follow, you will not be able to sift through your feed for good content. So, you lose on all accounts.
#HashtagInsanity
If you have to ask what the point of a hashtag is, then you shouldn’t hashtag at all. If you have ever tweeted in all hashtags, then you should probably hashtag detox for a while. Otherwise, hashtag with caution – no more than three per tweet (preferably less) – and stick to words that are the most relevant to the tweet itself.
For other hashtag rules… I think we might need an entire blog post. So, look out for that.
Tags: Social Media Marketing, Twitter