* Fail Homer Simpson Whale by @noticiasda:
As part of our 8 year anniversary celebrations, we present our top 8 common mistakes that people make in social media.
- Overly self promoting : Social Media Networking is about building relationships and providing added value so pushing yourself uninvited on to everyone is considered just plain rude. Keep your sales messages to a minimum and use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to offer advice, help and support to those you engage with. That way you’ll build trust, allow your prospects to get to know you and hopefully that will naturally lead to businesses.
- Good morning Twitter : May be its just the people that I follow on Twitter but every morning my timeline gets filled with strangers saying “good morning” to me. But its not just the daily hello that I feel is a mistake but the general, pointless messages that often get posted. Please keep your “good mornings”, lunch routine, daily clothing selection or ablutions to yourself please.
- Duplicate posts across various accounts : There are some people I follow who have multiple accounts. It makes sense if you own a number of businesses or want to have multiple personalities to have separate accounts but please, if you update one account don’t fire your update across all of your accounts. All that happens is you fill my timeline with the same tweet. Keep all your accounts separate and only post updates that are relevant to each one.
- Worrying about numbers : I see this all the time, people focus on how many followers they have rather than on the quality of the followers. Vanity takes over when we can see how many people follow an account and we all want to have more followers that our colleagues or competitors but, just as with visitors to your website, its not about the quantity of followers but how many convert or engage with you.
- Follow for the follow back : Related to number 4, people who follow everyone just so they get a reciprocal follow back are wasting their time. Follow people you are genuinely interested in getting to know better. Not only will the people you follow appreciate it more but you’ll be able to control the data coming at you more easily and provide them with more of yourself as you engage with them in a focused and targeted manner.
- Posting content that’s not relevant : Another common mistake I see is people updating their twitter status (quite often using an automated feed) with posts that are unrelated to them, their business or their profile. For example, if I follow a business owner who runs a cookery school I don’t expect to see them post a link to a news item about planning permission for a local strip club (unless its opening next to the cookery club and is therefore of interest to the person posting it). Of course everyone has multiple interests and I post often about Rugby as its one of my passions (watching, not playing). But this is mentioned in my profile so people who follow me know that this is what I could be tweeting about.
- Too many characters : Twitter status has a limit of 140 characters. When you’re posting a link to an external resource (e.g. a blog article or news item) take care not to fill all 140 characters. The reason is because when people re-tweet they will often want to add their own comment to your post. If your text takes up all or most of the 140 characters the re-tweeter will have to delete some of your text in order to add their own comment. As someone who re-tweets others content often I know how time-consuming this can be so try and keep your status updates short(er than 140 characters).
- Linking Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn updates : We’ve all done it, that option in your settings to link your accounts together is just too tempting but if you do link your profiles together just be mindful that what you post on one platform will be pushed to your other accounts automatically and they might not always be relevant. You’ll also end up with people commenting across multiple platforms and that can get confusing.
Those are my 8 bad habits on Twitter and i’m sure you many disagree with some (or all) so let me know what are the worst twitter mistakes you’ve seen…
My pet hate is when people tweet 20 to 30 times a day. It’s just too much – I guess if we all follow these 8 points, this would be less likely to happen. But at the moment it puts me off following someone if they tweet more than 5 times an hour!!
Its about relevance and purpose. I think as long as the updates are relevant and interesting I don’t see a problem with quantities of updates but if the person is just tweeting random thoughts it can get a bit monotonous. Of course, if you’re following them specifically for their random thoughts then that’s different but then their random thoughts are relevant.
Hi Russell.
Great set of tips, and I thoroughly agree.
Keep your content relevant to your audience. Pick a niche and keep at it. Have a good mix of content, PR, images, blog posts etc. It doesn’t have to be your own, mix it with content from industry influencers.
Don’t say anything that you wouldn’t say in person. It’s a conversation.
Keep it friendly; it’s more of a cocktail party than a meeting!
Additional notes -
2. Good morning Twitter – I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing this on a daily basis. However, it can be a good way to welcome new followers, thank people who regular retweet and mention you.
3. Duplicate posts across various accounts – I also know many people who do this, but it can be a useful to segment your content. Many large blogs such as Mashable have multiple Twitter accounts. Some tweets may cross over, however the intention is to post only relevant content to different audiences. Only follow accounts that are relevant, follow both and you may see duplicated tweets.
- Rhys Gregory
http://www.socialbull.co.uk
Testing my maths skills. Please delete.