10 Brand New Twitter Mistakes
Tips & etiquette for Twitter bliss
Newbies, seasoned tweeters and gurus rejoice! Search for Twitter mistakes on Google and you will get nothing but the same old dross about ‘having a profile pic’ and ‘don’t auto-follow’ etc, in your results. Dull, dull, dull. It’s all been done and said before. So without further ado, I bring you 10 completely new Twitter mistakes, observations and tips to creating value for your followers, avoiding common pitfalls and more.
Enjoy!
1. DMs
People who begin using Twitter, gravitate towards DMs as it feels like email. Safe private conversations. People need reminding not to bring the short falls of email to Twitter, conversations should be public where possible and only private if absolutely necessary.
2. RTs without reading
An easy trap to fall into if you don’t have enough time to read an article. You may begin retweeting based on the strength of a title alone. But that title may be misleading and not what the article is about, so always check first. Sending around flippant retweets, is the equivalent of spam emails or unsolicited mail through the door.
3. Hidden Messages
Any tweet which is sent to many, but with a message intended for one. A cowards way of bringing a tricky topic to light with one individual that you should be talking to directly. Messages like these tend to leave everyone else scratching their heads and maybe even the intended recipient uncertain of the importance of the message because it’s been sent to everyone.
4. Chat
We’ve all got caught up in multiple tweets in a public stream, but for the majority of overseers, it will be annoying ‘email-tennis’ filling up their Twitter stream and will have them hovering their fingers over the ‘unfollow’ button. Whilst it can be tempting and fun to message one person continually through Twitter, check yourself and consider whether your audience is enjoying it as much as you are. If not. Phone? Email? Or indeed, move the conversation over to a real chat client like Skype or MSN Messenger.
5. Trending Topics
Talking about topics because they are trending. Sure there’s some good causes and great charity based trends which develop. But otherwise, where is the value in talking about something that everyone else is talking about unless you can contribute something new? You will just end up becoming a voice in the crowd. Stay away from trending topics if you’re trying to make an impact. And definitely stay away from talking about them, just because everyone else is.
6. Apologies
You have just published that perfect 140 character tweet and then realised you’ve spelt something wrong. What should you do? Delete the tweet? Re-publish with the correct spelling? Or apologise? Unless the miss-spelling changes the context of the tweet, leave it. People will gloss over the slip and still understand the message. We’re human, we make mistakes, and your intelligence on Twitter will be acknowledged over time, not in the space of one tweet.
7. Generic Hellos / Goodbyes
Bringing small talk to Twitter such as hellos and goodbyes are completely unnecessary and valueless to the majority of followers. Who cares that you’ve just got up? Or you’re just going to bed? Where is the value in telling people this? Why is it important to you that people know this? This space isn’t ‘Chat’ remember? Imagine if you said hello to the twitter-verse and 4000 followers said hello back. Or worse, imagine saying goodbye, then logging off and logging back on the next morning to find 4000 replies from people saying goodbye from the night before, and then you say hello to them all again? How useless would your Twitter stream suddenly become? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
8. Connecting Accounts
Lots of websites allow you to channel your updates through Twitter, however this should be used wisely. Ask yourself ‘what value does this give my followers?’ first, if your only answer strokes your ego, forget it. A pet peeve of mine is people that pump their music playlist through Twitter—every 3-4 mins I get another message about their music track. Very annoying, and if you or that person doesn’t tweet frequently the stream will become full of music tracks. This is probably fine if you’re Pete Tong, but not if you’re anyone else. Are your LinkedIn or FaceBook updates suitable for your Twitter community? If not, un-tick the box that posts to directly to Twitter, or better still, disconnect them entirely.
9. Generic Notifications
Also related to the above, any generic message pushed out to your followers that ‘I’ve just uploaded a YouTube video’ or ‘I’ve just updated my profile bio, check it out’ only tells me that one thing. What I want to hear is ‘what’ has been created and ‘why’ should I go and view it? Stay away from generic automated messages, customise them to add in personal context. The majority of generic messages, will be ignored by everyone with the exception of your best mates and biggest fans.
10. Public DMs
A big no-no and one that you may do whilst getting used to the service. You discover you can’t send a private DM, as the other person isn’t following you, so you send a public reply instead. Ouch. Again a message that has no relevance to anyone else other than the recipient, so all it will do is create some form of public embarrassment, damage a friendship, and bloat the twitter stream of your followers.
If you’ve finished reading these points and don’t have a bead of sweat on your forehead, congratulations, you’ve probably been there and done that, and realised the error of your ways. If you’ve cringed your way through this list, then maybe you should reassess your Tweets, search for words of more value and follow my golden rule: ‘If in doubt, don’t’.
Right, there’s my list. Do you agree or disagree? Or do you have more to add? Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear what you think.
image credit: gorillasushi.com
June 25th, 2010
I agree entirely with the list and at some point in time, guilty as charged on most points :)
June 25th, 2010
All good points- hopefully read by lots of people as they get into tweeting. Dare I RT? Yes!
June 25th, 2010
Great post, there’s a few things in there i’m guilty of and certainly many things there that turn me off when i’m following someone.
That said, I don’t agree with the point that you shouldn’t tweet out hello / goodbye message. Sure, these can be annoying if it’s all someone does, but don’t forget one of the golden rules of Twitter is to be human. Greetings and farewells are part of all cultures and are important. Sure, just saying hello every morning could get a little tedious but saying “Morning everyone…” followed by what you’re doing for the day might seem mundane but people are following you for a reason, they know you or want to know more about you. Therefore, I think these kind of throw away tweets have value.
K
June 28th, 2010
Thanks Kent & Allanah, glad you enjoyed reading :)
In response to Kieran, I’d ask: What does saying hello and goodbye provide us with? Is it a feeling of acceptance? If so, maybe using Twitter for finding our acceptance is part of a bigger personal issue that should be addressed in the real world? Or is it a confirmation that people are listening to what we have to say? if so, this may be a way of measuring our effectiveness of operating in this social space – like an echo in a cave, if we shout we expect a response, and it provides us with comfort. Or is it an indication to others that our day is starting or ending? If so, why is this important? And is it part of a bigger message to wider audience (cross channel?) that we are now ‘open’ and ‘ready for business – so bring it on!’ etc? Or maybe the usage is for some other reason? I’d love to know what you feel about that.
For myself, a welcome or adios message of any kind only provides me with a singular piece of dialogue about another person – ‘I have arrived’ or ‘I am leaving’. In this 140 character space, making the most of those limitations to distribute value, information, education, personality, critique, requires thought and understanding of the space, audience and knowledge of the information being distributed. Does a generic ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ provide any of that? In a typical tweet, on average, I would guess that people can disseminate 3 pieces of ‘value’. E.g.: personal notification (I am here on Twitter and active right now), information (relevant references / sources / links), and opinion (personality and commentary). This is frequent on Twitter, and the better tweets, may even manage to carry 4 or even 5 pieces of value with them! So, now how does the singular piece of value tweets such as ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ appear? Weak, if we’re honest, surely?
Regarding your point about the importance of being human on Twitter. I couldn’t agree more. It’s absolutely essential, but that humanity, would be of better value if it were to enrich a regular tweet, rather than to stand alone in singularity. And on that point I know you agree, as I have seen your ‘welcome’ tweets, however you also attach the added value of asking your followers ‘what you are up to today?’. Which I wholly endorse.
Thanks for the contribution and mental stimulation at this time in the morning!
July 1st, 2010
Excellent post, thanks for sharing this. I have already twitted this post. Looking forward to you next article.
July 1st, 2010
I don’t know how many times I’ve done number 6. I agree, if you make a mistake leave it out there, I’m sure those that read the tweet understand what I’m trying to say.
July 26th, 2010
An excellent article.. I always find it strange that people do some really odd things on Twitter, that they would simply not do in a face to face meeting… I always encourage people to retweet other people’s stuff, however they should always check the link & contents first… I also encourage them to put to put a personal validation on the retweet as well..
I think that too many people just want to automate things.. To me, Twitter is all about being personal, being transparent, and taking just a few extra moments to add that personal reply / response, rather than just an automated / mass type of reply…
Mark
July 29th, 2010
[...] If your after a good guide to tweeting mistakes to avoid try media snackers blog here [...]
February 16th, 2011
Totally agree! er…time to reassess then…
Thanks a lot for this list! Clear, comprehensive and useful!
February 16th, 2011
Completely agree with point no.9 about generic notifications (“I just posted a photo” etc) and hate it when people use their twitter accounts as a substitute for text message for example.
Must admit though > it is easy to fall into this if you don’t want to offend anyone who’s trying to engage you in a twitter conversation….
Thanks for a reminder of some handy hints for tweeting bliss.
February 21st, 2011
Thanks for the good words Mererid. I’m already seeing more great etiquette tips & mistakes on Twitter, so maybe there will be an update to this post in future.
April 11th, 2011
Would also like to add AUTO DM’s to the list – it’s very tempting to automate responses and sometimes it’s good to have a standardised responses but to have an automatic direct message system set up means two things :
- you just communicated you haven’t the time to connect with that follower personally (which is what Twitter is all about)
- you’ve just DM’d someone who has no way of responding until you follow back… it’s back to braodcasting which is just not cool
April 11th, 2011
yep… auto DMs suck. I have another to add too.
Scheduling tweets! Think about the real world equivalent… shouting a statement into a room full of people, them responding and then they realise that you’re not actually in the room at all! How frustrating. I’m guilty, but won’t be doing that again :)
April 11th, 2011
Agree on all!
I used to have Auto Dm and auto follow but I very quickly felt I was slacking on direct comms with my followers so turned it off. In regards to scheduled tweeting I wrote a blog on a similar subject last week which you can read here…http://jojagiello.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/me-on-social-media-dashboards/