With more rumors circulating again over the past week of a possible twitter buyout, I decided to reflect on my interactions in the twitter community and what I like and dislike about it. It’s no secret that I am a bit of a twitter fanboy and have been using the service since it’s early beginnings. However there are still a few mistakes that I see users, both old and new, making on a regular basis. So I have compiled a list of the seven most common faux pas that that users commit on the popular social network.
1. Constant Self Promotion
Everybody who has used twitter knows this guy. Whether it’s another “Social Media Consultant” schlepping their services or the corporate big wig tooting his own horn, bragging is not a form of communication. Twitter is all about sharing thoughts and conversation. Constantly trying to make yourself look important is not only egotistical, it’s one of the quickest ways to get yourself ignored.
Instead try…
Promoting a product or service is ok when appropriate. People do go on twitter to learn about the latest and greatest developments in their field of interest and how to purchase accordingly. So try using what they call in the radio business a “plug“. A talk show host that does nothing but brag or sell is basically an infomercial. Real talk show hosts will usually only mention something that they are promoting towards the end of an interview and usually only when it is related to what they are talking about.
2. Rants
Once in a while, everybody needs a good rant. The problem with using a micro-blogging service like twitter is that it is more turned for conversations presented as bullet points. Therefore, not only is it hard to express yourself completely, but you also run a greater risk of being misunderstood.
Instead try…
Blogging is the perfect medium for this kind of thing. When you own your own blog, you make the rules. Whether it’s politics, frustrations at work, or relationships, blogging is the perfect venue for expressing yourself thoroughly. If you don’t own a blog but would like to try it out, you might want to check out my earlier post comparing the most popular blogging platforms out there. (You see there how I appropriately used a “plug”?)
3. Automated Direct Messages
About every day I get two direct messages without exception. One of them usually says “I just added you to my Mafia Family…”. The other one usually says “Thanks for the follow. Now check out my blog at http://IAmASocialLeper.com/…” Both of these are 100% unacceptable. Also, I’m pretty sure that nobody has ever genuinely felt gratitude for gaining a twitter follower. This is the #1 rule that I see being broken by supposed “Social Media Experts” that believe that automated messages are a form of conversation.
Instead try…
If you want to talk to someone outside of the public view use the direct message feature to make that happen. Most of the times that I use it is when I am giving someone my personal contact info so that they can call or email me. Twitter was never really made for keeping secrets.
4. Overly Person Information
I have seen this happen more times than I would like to admit and it should be the most self-explanatory of my rules listed here.
Instead try…
As a rule, I try to only communicate things on twitter that I could be comfortable saying around both my family and my coworkers. Topics such a recreational activities, hobbies, food, and family functions are all ok and should actually be encouraged. 
5. Excessive Professionalism
At the same time, topics of an exorbitant formality or dryness are actually not appropriate. I would never go home and talk to my family about a Q4 earning report or how the market saturation of SEO consultants has far passed maturity so twitter is usually not a good place to throw out that kind of water cooler talk.
Instead try…
If you are tweeting about an organization or business, try posting content that is more newsworthy than water cooler gossip but less than press release news (new hires, expanding offices, business trips, company/personal events). A lot of times, companies do things on a regular basis that they consider boring. These things are often fascinating to the outside world.
6. Chronic Repetition
This is the drug of choice of a lot of online retailers. I once saw a twitter profile of a business card printing company that had manually tweeted a link to their homepage, with different accompanying text, over 200 times in one day. Once again, this is an obvious turnoff to potential customers. However, it wouldn’t have made it to my list if I didn’t see this all the time.
Instead try…
Try to use twitter more to tell a story. Use it to talk about some of the cool features of your product, how your product is made, or how your product compares to the competition. Chances are, if you have a website, it already has multiple pages of content that you can use as conversation starters. A lot of this just comes down to good salesmanship and public relations.
7. Firehosing Tweets
This is basically what I would call spamming or anything that comes close to it (see the image at right). Unfortunately twitter is still possibly the easiest platform to spam in the history of the internet. Unlike other mediums such as Facebook or YouTube, any novice with no knowledge of programming can start spamming twitter quite successfully. While this can generate marginal amounts of unqualified traffic, the long term damage it can have on your brand is often irreparable.
Instead try…
The trick here is not even getting close to what the average user might consider spam. While I don’t condone automated tweets in general, every tweet that you push should have some actual value to somebody. Just using twitter to generate junk traffic to your website is never a viable strategy in the long run.
The bottom line is, never do anything on twitter that will compromise your reputation or that of the company that you represent. While I consider tweeting a kind of accelerated form of human interaction, it is important to stay in control of the message that you are presenting. If you would like to talk about this more, feel free to start a conversation with me about it on twitter.
Photo Credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63056612@N00/ / CC BY 2.0
