Things I didn’t Realize I was Doing Wrong on Twitter
We all know the supreme importance of social media, and its impact on business. We know that social media connects us with potential customers and people that are interested in the types of products and services that we provide. However, if we use social media the wrong way, it can have negative effects on our business and actually hurt our sales and conversions in the long run.
I am not going to sit here and tell you that I am a Twitter expert. In fact, if you look at my number of followers, you can tell that I am really not that good with Twitter. I will openly admit that, because for the last couple of years, I have been approaching Twitter all wrong. It wasn’t until recently that I have decided to take a long, hard look at why I don’t have the reach that I have desired with my social media efforts, and I started to do some research. It was then that I realized why I haven’t been that successful with Twitter, email subscriptions to my site, etc. Below are some tips so you can avoid the same mistakes that I have made over the past few years.
Posting Links to Your Site
I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but I will explain. You can’t simply post links to your followers and let that be the end of it. You have to add personality to your Twitter account. You have to be a person and share personal thoughts or a tip every now and then. Comment on current events. Only posting links to your site, or articles that you have written is called spamming. Unknowingly, I have been guilty of it. I thought that posting links to my tutorials would help people and they would overlook it, but people will just think you are a spam bot.
Not Interacting With Others
This goes with the first tip, but it is extremely important. Comment on one of your followers’ tweets, retweet something of theirs that you like, or reply to a question or a link that they posted. Their followers will see your replay, and you will gain followers, because they will see that you are human, and that you are willing to help others. Plus, it’s just plain good karma. If you are positive, then usually only positive responses will come back to you.
Not Being Active in General
Unfortunately, you cannot get out of spending some time on Twitter if you are truly after gaining quality followers. There are no automatic solutions where you can simply plug in some content and set it to auto. There are sites and programs and apps out there that will auto-tweet things that you specify, but that still doesn’t replicate a truly humanistic approach, such as replying to interesting posts by others, answering questions, etc.
Posting Identical Tweets
This is spamming in its worst form. It is sad to say that I have been guilty of this as well. One post is good enough for your content. If people are scanning through their tweets, they will see your content. There is no need to post it more than once. When they view your profile, it just makes you look like a spammer when you have multiple tweets about the same link to your article or blog post.
Not Retweeting Others’ Good Content
If you want your followers to retweet your articles and tutorials, then you need to retweet theirs. I am not saying to retweet everyone’s every post, I am simply saying that when you come across something that you like, retweet it, commenting on what you liked about it. Others will be much more willing to retweet your articles and links in return if they see that you will do the same.
Talking Too Much About Yourself
I know that one of the main reasons for using Social Media is to promote yourself, but Twitter and other social media works much like normal society does. If you walk through the halls of your office boasting about all the work that you have done, most people will ignore you or view you in a negative way. Actions speak louder than words. It is okay to promote your work every now and then, but be sure to mix in something regarding your followers every now and then. Comment on someone’s article, reply to a tweet, ask a question, etc.
Not Having A Healthy Balance Overall
Just as importantly, if you do any one of these things all of the time, and the rest none or not very often, you won’t get the results you are after. Being all about yourself will bore others, and not talking about yourself or your work at all defeats the point. Not interacting at all will make you look like a spammer, and interacting too much will make you look like you don’t have anything better to do. The key here is balance.
Following Everyone Who Follows Me
Reciprocity is usually the goal, with an even exchange, but honestly you don’t have to follow every person that follows you. My goal over the next few weeks is to weed out spammers and people that are inactive on my follow list, and I will only follows those that want to interact and who promotes and shares quality content. The reason that I have decide to go this route is that I can’t form a good relationship with my twitter followers if my quality Twitter followers are mixed with inactive people and spammers. I made a huge mistake of following people just because they followed me, which doesn’t help me a bit.
Following People Because I Hope They Will Follow Me Back
This was one of my biggest mistakes. You can see by my massive imbalance of follow to follower ratio, that it doesn’t do a bit of good to do this, and this action is pretty transparent. Why would someone follow me if I am just in it to accumulate a mass of followers? Where is the proof that I am not in it for selfish reasons? People will only follow you if your content is relevant to them, and they find you interesting. If you simply spam links and follow everyone on planet earth, your actions are pretty transparent. It is apparently all in how you approach Twitter.
Not Being True to Myself
I know this sounds oh so cliché, but it is true. Trying to be someone you aren’t, or trying to promote your business as more than it is, will only hurt it in the long run. People will investigate, and people will find out. You will only end up losing credibility, website visitors and followers. Also, not showing your personality will make you seem dry, or just like a robot. I am guilty of not interacting with followers like I normally would, which is definitely unlike my actual personality. I almost always have something to say about something, and when I like someone’s site, I shouldn’t be afraid of letting them know.
The Other Side of the Coin
Being too personal can cause problems too. I don’t feel that I am guilty of this, but I have seen far too often that some people don’t understand the concept of “too much information”. Brash obscenity, talking about your love relationships, or bashing other businesses can really hurt your reputation and kill your credibility. Also, people have enough problems as it is, and they certainly don’t want to hear about yours. We all have our days, but keep outrageous outbursts to a minimum. A proverb says “It is better to be silent and for people to think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” These words hold true in the digital world.
Conclusion
I have implemented the following tips over the last couple of days, and I have already seen a noticeable difference. I went from having 535-540 followers to 552, which is 15-17 followers in just a few days. If I’d been doing this all along, I would have had many more quality followers, with much more meaningful interactions. Like I said, I am no Twitter expert, nor will I claim to be, but following these tips will only help to expand your reach within the Twitter world.
