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The 10 Worst Mistakes on Twitter

Written by: Jamie Turner

Article Overview: If you're a business-owner, entrepreneur or marketing director, you're probably interested in learning the ins and outs of using Twitter. Some of your questions may include "How can I use Twitter for my business?" or "How can I use Twitter for marketing?" Another question you might ask yourself is "How should I NOT use Twitter?" In other words, what are the most common mistakes with using Twitter? This article answers that by providing an overview of the 10 worst mistakes on Twitter. Hopefully, by understanding how NOT to use Twitter, you can eventually become a Twitter Power User.

The 10 Worst Mistakes on Twitter

If you're a business-owner, entrepreneur or marketing director, you're probably interested in learning the ins and outs of using Twitter. Some of your questions may include "How can I use Twitter for my business?" or "How can I use Twitter for marketing?"

These are all good questions and ones that we'll address in future articles. But another question you might ask yourself is "How should I NOT use Twitter?" In other words, what are the most common mistakes with using Twitter?

Relax. The good news is that the whole social media world is a forgiving one. There aren't too many serious mistakes and if, by chance, you do make one, people are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, assuming you genuinely try to make amends.

With that in mind, the 60 Second Marketer team recently did a little research into what the most common mistakes on Twitter are. Here's our list -- hopefully, it'll help you figure out how best to use Twitter for you and/or your business.

The 10 Worst Mistakes on Twitter:

1. Using Twitter to SPAM people: We’re not exactly sure why anyone would use Twitter as a SPAM tool, since that technique is extremely short-sighted. Still, some people do it. You know the type — they’re following 2,367 people and have one person following them back. Don’t be that person.
2. Blocking your updates: WTF? You sign up for Twitter and follow people only to put a roadblock up if they want to follow you back? That simply doesn’t make sense. Don’t be that person either.
3. Overly-promotional Tweets: If every Tweet (or every other Tweet) is designed to drive people back to your site, you’re guilty of being overly-promotional. At the 60 Second Marketer, we (quite unsuccessfully) try to incorporate the Chris Brogan rule of 15 sharing Tweets for every 1 promotional Tweet. (We’re not at the 15:1 ratio yet, but we’re trying.)
4. Not using your Twitter home page properly: The Twitter home page is a blank canvas that you can use to position yourself in the marketplace and promote your company or your website. Use it that way. Otherwise, you shouldn’t be on Twitter in the first place.
5. Believing it’s about the quantity of followers, not the quality: The little-known truth about Twitter is that it’s not about the quantity of people following you, it’s about the quality of people following you. Don’t be swept up by all this talk about “I have 5,000 people following me on Twitter.” In this day and age, with automated follow systems in place, the quantity is less relevant. It’s about the quality of your followers — that is, the engagement and trust your followers have with you.
6. Irrelevant Tweets: A sure-fire way to tell if someone is a newbie to Twitter is when they Tweet about the weather, their mood or what they had for dinner last night. Don’t do this. Nobody is interested in those topics. (Except for you, of course.)
7. Simply ReTweeting (RT-ing) everything: Again, this is a sure-fire way to tell that someone is new to Twitter. RTs are important and can build credibility and trust with your followers, but you should try to take a nugget of information from the article or post and add it to your RT. (e.g. 37% of all widgets are sold to people with blue hair. For the entire post, click here: tinyurl.com/notreal43)
8. Not Tweeting: Interestingly enough, some reports indicate that Twitter has about a 60% churn rate after the first month. That means that only 40% of the people who sign up for Twitter use it after the first month. If you’re not going to dive in with both feet, consider spending your time on other pursuits.
9. Not adding value: This is related to the RT issue. Don’t just ReTweet everything, add some value, some perspective, some insight. That’s the best way to keep people interested in following you.
10. Wasting time: Let’s admit it, Twitter is a huge time sucker. It’s very, very easy to get sucked into articles that you’re only vaguely interested in reading. It’s up to you to put up boundaries. I use the “off the grid” approach. That is, I tell myself I’m “off the grid” when I need to take a break from social media. After all, if you don’t put up some boundaries, you’ll disappear into the Twitter Tornado and never be found again.

Related Articles
  Is Twitter For The Birds?
  Best and Worst
  Is Twitter on their last “tweet”?
  You're Addicted to Twitter If You..
  How Twitter can have a postive effect on your business

Article Tags: benefit of the doubt, br, business owner, chris brogan, entrepreneur, ins and outs, li li, marketer, marketing, one people, person li, roadblock, rsquo, spam tool, tweet, twitter, worst mistakes



Related Forum Posts
Re: What is your worst / best month? - Best: October, November, April Worst: January, February, July
Re: What is your worst / best month? - Best = January, February and March. Worst = April (tac season) July and August (vacations).
Re: Using Twitter To Double Your Traffic? - I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.
How to Use Twitter to Market Products? - How do you use Twitter to market products? Has the Twitter route given you good results? Please share your experience and ideas on how to use Twitter to take a product to the customers. Thank you in advance.
Re: What is your worst / best month? - Best months for my business are historically March/April/May & August/Sept/Oct Worst months: December/January (Holidays) & June/July (Vacations) I see our traffic go way up during the good months and way down during the bad months. Very cyclic. Keep in mind, my clients buy businesses and no one thinks of doing that during the holiday or during vacation.


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