Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Top 5 Mistakes People Make On Twitter

February 25, 2010 | Social Media

Out in the wild world of Twitter, there are people playing the game well and people who are not.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that Twitter is just a platform and it is up to YOU how you use it. It isn’t as if there is one way and every other way is wrong. That said, this is my blog, so therefore my opinion is going to be proudly published as stated fact. Deal with it. ;)

So, here is a short list of things I see on Twitter that I think are stupid…

  • Using a logo and not a real picture. Unless your Twitter account is for a corporate brand, I think not using a real picture of yourself is stupid. To me, it comes off as trying to hide. If your Twitter account is a brand, then do whatever you want. But, if it is your name, then use a picture of YOU.
  • Scheduling tweets in advance. Why does anybody do this? If you’re not available to tweet, don’t tweet. Nobody really cares. I know that some don’t want their account to appear stale even though they have no time, but for me, the moment I know somebody is scheduling their tweets, it feels less personal and I write them off.
  • Automated tweeting from your blog archives. I know of one blogger who continues to auto-tweet stuff from his blog archives every 10 minutes. This is essentially Twitter spam. I’ve been on the verge of unfollowing this person several times. The only reason I haven’t is because we’ve dealt with each other outside of Twitter. The trickle of traffic coming in from these tweets isn’t worth harming the ACTUAL relationships that can be gotten on Twitter. Essentially, auto-tweeting turns Twitter into little more than trolling for traffic and kills the real value of the medium.
  • Auto-Following. Auto-following results in grossly untargeted Twitter followings. It is a tactic used only for the high numbers, but it results in an audience who isn’t listening to a word you tweet because they only followed you to get THEIR follower count up. It is a shell game. Remember, there is no rule that says you have to follow back everybody who follows you.
  • Auto-DM. I think this is one of those things that seems like a good idea, but isn’t. I have NEVER gotten an auto-DM from somebody and cared. The timing of it tells me right away it wasn’t personal. You can tell. And my opinion of that person immediately drops unless I knew them already. Auto-DM is no different than stuffing your business card into somebody’s hand the moment they try to meet you at a party.
    So, what do you think? Got any you want to add? Do you disagree with any of mine?

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  • Nice list David. There are really many mistakes that people do on their twitter account. Some of them even don't care if they have targetted followers as long as they keep their BIG followers list.
  • I schedule my tweets, not all of them, but at least three or four every single day. But that's mostly because I live in Norway, and I like to tweet when my followers are awake. It works great for me, because the tweet is the same, it's just the time when I send the tweet that's different.
  • What's wrong with hiding? I actively avoid publishing any photos of myself online, and there's no way I would use my photo as an avatar. The people who know me in person tend to know what I look like, everyone else I prefer to not know what I look like. I guess it's a security thing as much as everyone else.
  • Excellent points, David. Too many people forget that Twitter's power as a marketing tool lies in th eway it allows you to build a loyal following, or a tribe, to use Seth Godin's term. Doing the things you outline above achieves exactly the opposite.
  • David, you just hit the nail at the head here concerning twitter. Actually, twitter was made to use as a micro-blogging platform that connect people and inform each other what is current going on in the world right now. But you see, some unscrupulous marketers and bloggers are trying to manipulate the twitter system and make it to become ineffective for the founders.

    It is a sad thing though! But I think people like you and me would be very straight and truthful when using twitter platform to connect with the people that matter most in our life. Let us all be real in twitter by actually logging in as a human and start connecting with each other and our love ones.

    Unlike many other marketers who use automation to post irrelevant things in order to take advantage of the twitter system without actually getting involve themselves. That's my opinion for this post David. Have a bliss time there...
  • I don't even follow people who don't use a real picture for their profile. Being on Twitter is suppose to be all about building relationships, not about branding another company
  • Oh this is a post I can bite into lol

    I agree with you on MOST your points. I think it comes down to what you use twitter for, for some everything you said just doesn't,t work and for others it works fine.

    For me, I'm in the middle, I build relationships with twitter with hopes that relationship will spill over to my blog. But I am also a marketer and use twitter to market things about my biz, a new post, a new product and ever once in a a while a affiliate product.

    I think the biggest issue is the frequency that people do these things. If I post 20 articles a day that were helpful and you wouldn't have found on your own, and my one post of a aff link bothers you then that's silly, and that's on you to unfollow.

    As far as DM's, I use them and I will say if done nicely and not "heres my product buy it now" kinda way it works. I have gotten many people to my blog from my DM's and I have made sales of my twitter book also,so for me auto DM's done right, work.

    I also auto follow people, since I don't think I am any more important than anyone, I have learned things from newbie friends and from seasoned friends, so I auto follow and clean up my list once a month to drop dead weight.

    I think to many people walk on egg shells with twitter, if you use it with the right mindset and come from a helpful place people will see that and are fine with certain things.

    It's a tool, what works for you wont work for me and vice versa..
  • One of my pet peeves is when someone follows me and I see that they are following 1,000 people more than are following them.

    I am not saying that this is always the case, but I usually don't even bother looking at their profiles to see if they are worth following. The reason? They are most likely using mass-follow tools and they're all about the look at me and my stuff.

    I have no problem with scheduling tweet as long as it is blended with some humanity, AND as long as the scheduled stuff is good.
  • I have resisted scheduling tweets for a long time. I tweet a lot sometimes so my downtime/silence I consider a gift to my followers. :)

    Don't like following users who have keywords for a Twitter handle. I want a name and a real picture.
  • Perhaps if we avoided or minimized the use of most of these automated features and added our own personal touch to our Twitter account, we'd be showing our followers how genuine we are. I think it comes down to how much time you put in Twitter.
  • David, you're probably preaching to the choir here, but here's a big "Amen!" anyway.

    What's worse in my book: using a logo or avatar picture on LinkedIn. That's just a no go in my book.
  • I think one thing that people do that's really pointless is using mass follow tools. I did that with my skooloflife twitter account and I had to go back and clean up that mess when I finally started understanding twitter. That's why for blogcastFM I don't do any mass following and I only follow those people that I have directly connected with somehow.
  • Oh, congrat's on the baby, hadn't had a chance to tell you yet :-)
  • I can agree with everyone of these David, and I know of the blogger you refer to, I actually did unfollow him yesterday as part of a mass unfollow where I unfollowed everyone because I had been following anyone that followed me.

    I lost about 1000 followers due to it, but I suspect most of them were bots anyway. I am trying to have a new outlook on how I use twitter, so I am experimenting with a few things.

    About the scheduled Tweets, I hate it too (mainly because of that blogger) but am experimenting with scheduling a post about my article to go out twice during the same day I wrote it, with different text (keywords) explaining the article. This is mainly due to the fact that I am experimenting with using different forms of attracting attention to the article. With that in mind, I don't think that scheduling 2-3 tweets a day is annoying, but I wouldn't schedule anything beyond that.
  • Auto-DMing and not following back so you can't DM them back is my biggest petpeeve.
  • Hi David,

    I disagree with your point about scheduling tweets in advance. I see what you're saying, but I live in Hawaii and work full time during the day. If I didn't schedule my tweets, most of my followers (since many are based on the Continental US) wouldn't see any tweets from me at all, except during the evenings. On the east coast, they wouldn't see anything until 11 p.m. =)

    I also batch process my RSS feeds, so you'd end up seeing me tweet 20 blog posts in 20 minutes - and then nothing else all day ;)

    I don't auto follow or auto DM, and I engage with followers as much as I can - but I'm a part time blogger and I don't let it interfere with my work, since I take my work time very seriously.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
  • I too get tired of the archive autotweets. I have unfollowed and refollowed a couple of people who do this. It is like you said, building a relationship outside of twitter lets you ov4erlook some things. and the auto DM should be banned. I think it is stupid to send that out when you follow someone. I do like to schedule tweets about my blog though. I send out 4-5 per day trying to get some traffic built up but I am on twitter all day interacting and RTing with people. I think there is a balance.
  • Auto-DM's are one of my least favorite thing. That and the twitter spam.

    Some of the things I would add to the list are:

    1. only or mostly tweeting quotes. and doing it 100 times a day.
    2. Posting long follow Fridays and/or lots of them. Here is a good example of a Follow Friday post... http://twitter.com/ActuallyNPH/status/9015911276

    Neither of those things inspire dialogue or connections usually, and I have unfollowed offenders in the past.
  • JeremyHoover
    I think it's stupid when people don't engage with their followers. Not only not replying to someone seeking to engage with them, but not reading any tweets from others and replying. I know everyone's busy, but it's not too much to dip in a couple times a day and reply to a couple tweets from other people. You know, like in conversation.

    If I go to someone's profile and their page has zero or few @'s, I'm very unlikely to follow them.
  • aaronmielke
    One thing that annoys me about some twitter users is tweeting nothing but their new blog posts or RT'ing every new blog post within their niche or other people's tweets and never tweeting anything of their own. I have had to unfollow a few users because of this...they never tweeted anything personable that helped nurture the connection we may have had at first.

    When I follow someone, usually something in their profile or a tweet has led me to believe we have something in common and we may be able to learn from one another. If that person does nothing but self-promotion and RT'ing, I have no choice but to unfollow. Just my $.02.
  • Great point. On the flip-side, you also don't want to ONLY talk about yourself and never interact with others or promote others.
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