Twitter Errors That You Must Avoid

Many people swear by Twitter for business and once you start to get used to using it regularly, you may feel that you don’t know how you can do without it. In certain cases, it is one of the best ways of communicating short, sweet messages that get right to the heart and cause a big impact.

The available tools

Technology is making strides on a very regular basis and some of the tools that are now available are amazingly helpful and will help you to bring your business to the next level with much less effort than you would have had to make before those tools were available. There is a tool to help you track your metrics, marketing tools, and new and exciting widgets. For what it is and how it works, if you haven’t taken full advantage of Twitter for your business yet, it is definitely time that you do that. There are many things that you should do and many things that you should not do on social media. It is very important for your business that you understand which is which so that you can avoid making mistakes that may be costly for your business. Here are some of the things on Twitter that you are better off avoiding.

• Don’t start your tweets with a “@”: This error has to do with the type of visibility you wish to allow your followers. If you want your followers to be able to see your tweet in their Twitter stream, don’t start your tweets with “@” and your username. If you do present your tweets in that way, you only be allowing your posts to be viewed by a very small number of people. You may have been sending your tweets to a very limited list of people without realizing it and that would probably defeat the purpose. The only time that you should be using “@” and  your username is when you are intentionally interacting with someone on a personal level or you are sharing information that you don’t want to share with a large  number of people.

• Don’t use too many hashtags: If you use too many hashtags, your Twitter updates will be difficult for your followers to read. Also, it will seem (to other people) as though you are not able to focus on the message that you are trying to convey and the interactions that you are trying to have. The consequence of that might be that you lose followers who may be valuable to you and your business.

• Don’t post tweets that are too long: Of course, most people (you included) are probably aware of the fact that Twitter has a 140-character limit for each tweet. Try to keep your tweets clear and concise and people will react positively to what you are posting. It is also important to remember that if your tweet uses up the character limit, there will be no room left for anyone to retweet your tweet and you definitely want to have your tweets retweeted (over and over again).

• Be careful if you deal with more than one account at a time: If you happen to manage more than one Twitter account at a time (even if that means that you handle a person and a business Twitter account), you should make sure that you make posts very carefully. The last thing that you want to do is to mistakenly post a person tweet on your business account or vice versa. That could potentially be disastrous for you and your business.

• Don’t discount analytics: Now that Twitter has made Twitter Analytics available to the general public, you should study it and take advantage of it for your business. If you have a good grasp on the type of information that you should be tracking, you can market your brand much more effectively. It is critical to your professional success. Having the analytics will help you more than you may realize.

• Pay close attention to quality versus quantity: When it comes to social media, many people mistakenly think that if they have a large number of followers on Twitter, they are more successful than if they have fewer followers. That is not necessarily true. What is really important is the quality of those followers. If your Twitter followers are members of your target audience and they are people with whom you can share a mutually beneficial relationship, that is far more important than having 10,000 Twitter followers whom you don’t know and with whom you never (or rarely) interact.

Conclusion

Twitter is definitely an important social media channel for business. You can really make it work for your business and if you do, you will get attention for all the right reasons and you will be able to bring your business to the next level. It is just as important for you to know what to do with Twitter as what not to do and knowledge is definitely power in this case. In your effort to build relationships through Twitter, remember that if someone who you deem of value follows you, make sure to follow them back. That is the only way that you will begin to have a meaningful relationship with that person.  If you follow sensible steps when using Twitter and doing things that make logical sense in your effort to build relationships with your followers, you should do well. Use Twitter to your full advantage!

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