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7 Things NOT to Do on Twitter

Maybe I'm just crabby today, but I needed to share some of my Twitter pet peeves. I'm not mad at you if you do any of these, you probably didn't know any better. There are many more Twitter Don'ts, but these 7 top my list.

Please DO NOT:

1. Tweet in all hashtags. #I #Can't #Easily #Read #What #You #Are #Saying. Besides those hashtags aren't relevant or helpful.
   
2. Make your profile all hashtags. See previous.
   
3. Leave your profile description blank! I don't follow anyone who doesn't have a description - I usually think they are spam.
   
4. Leave your profile picture an egg! See previous.
   
5. Write in weird cap/none caps. SeE hOw AnNoYiNg ThIs Is? I hate it.
   
6. Follow people and then promptly unfollow them once they follow you back. How rude. Tsk, tsk, tsk (wagging finger.)
   
7. Tweet others' content only. Unless your a news aggregator, have some of your own content!

Do a quick Google search for other Twitter Don'ts -- there's a lot of information out there. Also, do you have any Twitter pet peeves you'd like to share? I'd love to hear. Drop me a comment below.

I'm Still Here

First of all, let me apologize for not posting anything for so long (this is assuming you’ve been desperately awaiting my next installment of social media tips to get you through those puzzlingly moments within this brand-new  pre-teen age of marketing.

Second, I’ve been waiting to tell you that I’m no longer nervous. I’m actually gaining confidence. I’ve been seeing rewards and benefits from the different tips and tools I’ve been learning.

I’ve been applying everything I’ve been learning over the month (and a half) since I last posted. And now I’m going to work hard to deliver to you what I’ve discovered in a way that is directly and immediately applicable to what you are doing. This is also assuming you find my tips to be helpful, which I have convinced myself they are – you’re more than welcome to agree.

I digress. I intend to talk about how to continue to build your following after breaking free from following limits. At my day job we’ve grown from 1074 to 1376 followers on Twitter in the past 6 weeks. Before I wrote that post we had grown 74 followers from April to the day I wrote.  That’s 74 followers in 7 months and then 301 in a month and a half. I took Statistics, but remember nothing, so I’m sorry, I don’t feel like figuring out the difference in growth percentages between the two. But it's a big difference, I promise. Stay tuned for a blog "Puzzled Statistician", but please don’t hold your breath, I like you.

Again, I digress. I’ve also been working on marketing our book for the company I work for. I’m going to tell you how we’ve been using Twitter for marketing a particular product. And more Grammar Talk (or is it speak?) Please don’t groan like that, it reminds me how boring everyone thinks it is. And that I feel odd for absolutely loving something so widely regarded as boring. But then again, I’m pretty odd.

But, I digress. Please, please hang around (again, my apologies) and please expect great things. Or at least helpful things (shoot for the stars, land on the moon?) I plan to deliver.

Why Torture Yourself? 3 Quick Tips on Writing Titles

I hate writing titles. I am not alone. I think humans in general hate writing titles. Why is it so frustrating and hard?

For me, it’s trying to get the gist of the piece across in a quick and somewhat clever way – although in the age of the internet, a “clever”title is less desirable than in print. Here are 3 things I think about when I’m creating (and re-creating and re-creating) a title:

3 Lists You Should Write Before Following

Ok, so you’ve signed up, you may or may not have written a profile description (it is crucial to write this and if you haven’t, this post will help you), and you’ve uploaded a picture (please do this, no one wants to look at another egg)…now what?

You need to start following people. Who you follow is important for a couple reasons. It’s whose tweets will be streaming through your feed, and it’s also who may potentially follow you back. If you are on Twitter to promote your business, website, or blog – following people is how you can begin to gain followers yourself.

Think about why you are using Twitter and write it down. Now, start figuring out who to follow by making 3 separate lists (I suggest writing each idea on a separate line, and make them as concise as possible.) If you are going to be using Twitter to strictly promote your business and network, write these 3 lists from a business perspective. Ok, ready? Go:

9 Tips on 140 Characters or Less, Part 1

Many things can be intimidating about Twitter (creating your profile, gaining followers, starting a conversation, etc.) but the most daunting can be the 140 character limit. On Twitter, tweets are limited to 140 characters or less. I hated this rule when I first signed up – not because I wanted to write novels, but because I didn’t want to have to work so hard to make it fit. But the 140 limit is the beauty of Twitter; people have to say what is most important and leave it at that.

The first time you post on Twitter, you will probably go over the 140 characters, and then proceed to stare at your sentence, convinced you can’t cut it down any more. You can. 

I’m a writer and editor by trade with my training in Professional and Technical Writing – it is my job to make writing as clear and concise as possible. But even with my profession and training by my side, I still struggle with the character count at times, mainly because I can’t stand to spell in “funky” ways or misuse punctuation (although, I’ve loosened up a teeny, tiny bit.)

To start, just get out what you’d like to say. Don’t try to fit in in 140 or less right off the bat. Sometimes you will, but not often (until you get good at it.) Get your words out and then cut, cut, cut.

Here are some tips to help you make your characters count:

What to Do When You're Stuck at 2,001 Following on Twitter

As I’ve mentioned before, I run our social media at the company I work for. We’re a fairly new company and we’ve been working hard to grow our Twitter following for the past year. In March, we finally went over that 1,000 follower mark. That really is a great feeling. At that point, we were at nearly 2,000 people whom WE were following. Eventually, we hit 2,001 – and much to my annoyance and frustration – I realized we were stuck.

Twitter places caps on the amount of people you can follow. While I haven’t found exactly how they calculate who gets cut off when and why – I do know it is based on your following to follower ratio. And as much as this 2,001 cap has frustrated me, I do understand why the Twitter Police do it. They want to keep Twitter a happy place where spambots can’t just follow 3 billion people, trying to get a million to follow back.

So, basically, I’ve been painstakingly going through our list of 2,001 following and finding people I don’t think are benefiting us in any way, or have never communicated with us or responded to us, and unfollowed them. I did this sometimes when I had spare time (ha! spare time – what is that?) or when a particularly interesting group or person had followed us and I wanted to be able to reciprocate with a follow back. So, seriously, I used scroll through the forever loading list of people, unfollow someone, and make room for someone else. It sucked. Plain and simple.