The Twitter bandwagon is taking on new passengers every day. Many of these new Twitter users are businesses trying to grow their brand through social media. Unfortunately, they often flame out quickly because they don’t understand how to properly leverage Twitter for their business and they ignore social networking etiquette.
If you’re new to Twitter, here are 5 mistakes you should avoid at all costs.
1. Only tweeting self-promotional content—It’s called “social networking” not “social advertising.” Even if the goal of signing up for a Twitter account is to somehow further your business, sending out a flurry of self-promotional tweets isn’t going to do you any good. No on wants to be advertised on Twitter, so any followers you might have will drop you. Instead, focus on adding value to the follower-experience. Provide your unique insight on topics, link out to quality sources, and interact with your followers.
2. Not interacting with your followers—Speaking of interacting with your followers, failing to do so will get you nowhere fast on Twitter. The whole point of social networking is to be, well, social. This means spending time growing your relationships with your followers, not just sending out one-way tweets all day.
3. Tweeting on rare occasions—If you want to build a strong Twitter presence, you need to consistently provide quality content to your followers. At the very least, you should be tweeting a few times each day. Tweeting once or twice a week is an easy way for your followers to forget you and eventually stop following you altogether.
4. Getting overly defensive—When you put yourself out there on Twitter, someone is going to eventually disagree with something you say or even say something negative about your company. When this happens, take a step back and breathe for a second. Don’t instantly get combative by arguing back with them. Nothing will get accomplished this way. Either engage in a respectful debate with them or if they’re just a keyboard gangster looking to start trouble, ignore them.
5. Focusing on quantity of followers—I always find it funny whenever someone brags to me about how many followers they have. Or even better is when they tell me about some shady technique they use to instantly gain thousands of followers. Who cares? The number of followers you have means nothing if they aren’t engaged. Engaged followers are likelier to take action on your behalf (whether that be spreading your message online or buying your products). Give me 100 followers who are truly interested in what I have to say over 1,000 disinterested followers any day.
What other mistakes do you see new Twitter users make? Share them in the replies.