The Top 9 Ways to Annoy the Crap out of Twitter People

 

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I speak to small business owners and other people a lot about Twitter. I make no secret of the fact that Twitter is responsible in a large way for the growth and success of my businesses online.

And with more and more people venturing into the world of Twitter, there are more and more ways for novices to the platform to get it horribly wrong.

Twitter users can be an insular bunch and, while they can reward someone who gets Twitter right with spectacular results, they can also destroy someone’s chances of succeeding on the social networking giant if they don’t get the social media ‘etiquette’ right.

The most obvious ways to be annoying on Twitter are of course constantly pushing your own agenda and doing the hard sell at every tweeting opportunity. But there are loads of other less obvious ways to make mistakes on Twitter and, if you are a small business owner looking for Twitter success you need to know about them.

With that in mind, I have put together the top 9 ways to annoy the crap out of Twitter people – and I would love you to add your own in the comments below so we make a more complete list. In no particular order, they are:

1. An Incomplete Bio

Why would anyone follow you and what you have to say if they don’t know who you are and what you are going to tweet about? Think about it, would you follow someone like that?

Include in the “One Line Bio” section of the “Settings” page, at least your real name (for personal accounts) or your business name (for business accounts) and a webpage (or even better a customized Twitter landing page – see above) and a short but succinct summary of you.

Keep in mind, there are lots of third party Twitter devices now that crawl accounts for keywords that people might be interested in, so make sure you include your keywords in the bio so that people can find you and follow you.

2. Protected Tweets

This is a bit contentious, but I believe you shouldn’t check the box that says “Protect my tweets”. By checking this box, nothing you tweet about will appear in the public timeline and only people who you have already allowed to follow you specifically will see what you are tweeting about.

Like all social media platforms, Twitter requires people to be social and get involved – in fact, this is the best way to get a good following and thereby get the most out of Twitter.

If you exclude people, other than those who already know you, to get the benefit of your wisdom and knowledge on Twitter, then I think you are missing a golden opportunity.

3. Having the wrong image

You should have a personal account and username if you are that person and a business account if you just want to project the corporate image of your business without any real personalization. Even if the account is a business one, I think that representing your business with a more personal feeling is a good idea. People want to connect with people, not logos.

If your Twitter account is a personal one, use a photo of you as the display photo and make the photo relevant to your personality or the subject of your tweets.

For instance, I have used the same photo taken whilst on holidays looking silly for my photo forever and since I tweet mostly about family travel and the lighter side of travel, as well as my own personal opinions on small business and online marketing, the photo is both appropriate and has become what my Twitter profile is known for.

Also, think about including a personalized background for your Twitter homepage as well. I reckon nothing looks worse or gives off more of an impression that you are not really committed to tweeting than having one of Twitter’s default backgrounds or worse still the default avatar instead of a photo.

4. Making your tweets difficult to share

Re-tweeting is basically when you see something you like that someone has said in your Twitter community and think it is worthwhile sending on to the rest of your community who may not have seen it.

If you want your Twitter community to spread your word around (and let’s face it who wouldn’t) then you have to make it as simple as you can for them to do it.

When someone re-tweets any of your tweets there are some characters at the start (eg RT @nickbowditch = 16 characters) that will be included in their re-tweet. Therefore, try to keep your tweets (or at least the ones you hope people will re-tweet) to a maximum of about 100-120 characters instead of the standard 140.

5. Not acknowledging your advocates

Some people will argue that thanking those who retweet or share your tweets/information clogs up the timeline and is superfluous, but I totally disagree. If someone did something nice for you in the real world, you would thank them. I reckon it is no different on Twitter. Be courteous.

If you, like me, think that people who re-tweet your stuff should be thanked, I also think your original link should be included in your thankyou tweet. For instance, if I tweeted something like:

“New Blog Post: How to use social media to make your small business big http://bit.ly.smallbiz”

and Mary Smith (@marysmith) saw the post, thought it was interesting and then re- tweeted it, I would reply to her with something like:

“@marysmith Thanks for the RT about my new blog post http://bit.ly.smallbiz”

In this way, my thankyou doesn’t just seem like random rubbish but instead a sincere thankyou but this also gives a second chance to promote your blog post to your (and maybe Mary’s) followers.

6. Bore everyone with personal conversations

There is nothing worse on Twitter than this:

“@boringperson1 hey, how are you going?”

“@boringperson2 yeh not bad, just heating up my lasagna”

“@boringperson1 oh ok, did you make it yourself?

“@boringperson2 no no its leftovers. Was takeaway last night.”

Right… who cares? I mean it’s fine if you want to use Twitter like MSN Messenger but don’t subject all of your followers to it or they might not be your followers for very long. If you are engaged in a long conversation or something of a more personal nature, use the direct messages!

7. Don’t reply to people mentioning you or asking you something

People will sometimes say something directly to you or about you in the timeline and if you are not watching all of the time, you could miss it. For small business owners, this could potentially be lost business.

There are many third party applications out there now, such as Tweetdeck, Twhirl and Destroy Twitter that I think are absolutely essential if you plan on doing a lot on Twitter.

They let you keep up with not only the public timeline, but also when people either respond to you, or talk about or mention you, as well as when they send you direct messages.

You can also use them to search keywords or other users and they are mostly all free.

8. Use automated software for sending your tweets

This is another one which people might disagree with me about. A lot of people use a third-party software or website to send a tweet when you, for instance, update your Facebook profile. by sending the same update directly to Twitter.

While I agree that these applications save a lot of time, I think they can very easily undermine any good work you have done on Twitter because usually your Twitter audience isn’t the same target market as your Facebook or Linkedin market.

I just reckon you come off as looking a bit lazy or not committed to Twitter and if anyone is going to smell that, it’s Twitter people.

9. Talk rubbish

Probably the most obvious, but as anyone who uses Twitter on a regular basis will tell you, this is also the one that a lot of people still don’t get.

Telling your Twitter followers what you had for breakfast, that you are going for a walk or anything else inane and boring is definitely not going to help you build a constructive and effective following on Twitter.

Get to the point, stay on topic and you will quickly see the benefit of this great social networking platform.

Want more information on getting Twitter right?

Check out my ebook, “The 34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter” by clicking here.

If you would like to know how I can help you grow your small business and engage your target market and your community better through using Twitter, call me TODAY on 02 4324 2594.

Oh, and don’t forget to add me on Twitter: @nickbowditch

Can you add to this list? Please let us know in the comments below.

Tagged as: ebook, social engagement, Social Media, Twitter