Common Twitter Mistakes
1. Choosing inappropriate usernames: This is the first mistake many people make. Your username on Twitter should identify you as you would want to be known on the network. A nice nickname is appropriate for a person who intends to use Twitter to socialize but not for a company or business. Do not choose a name (such as that of a celebrity) just because it is popular and might get you more followers. It only depicts as you a wannabe or spammer and people will stop following you or responding to your tweets when they realize you are not the real deal. An exception is when the account is for parody purposes.
2. Creating multiple Twitter accounts for the same purpose: Aside from the fact that it is cumbersome to maintain all the accounts and tweet regularly from them, people will usually stop following users that send the same tweets at the same time (that is, if they already follow you). Creating multiple accounts in such a manner is indicative of a spammer and is highly irritating to other users.
3. Using one account for both personal and business tweets: If users on Twitter follow you because they like your product or business, then they probably would not want to read tweets about your latest quarrel with your friend, about your political views, and so on. People who follow you because they are interested in you might not enjoy the fact that you only consider them as potential customers when you tweet about a new product. Create separate Twitter accounts for personal and business use. It is okay though to add a personal side to your business so as to connect better with customers; we are all humans after all.
4. Using default Twitter settings: These include using the default Twitter page layout, having no bio on your page and not adding an appropriate picture or logo to your account. People who want to follow you might be put off if you do not have a picture of yourself or a bio that tells a bit about you. For a business, this indicates a lack of professionalism.
5. Posting too many tweets in a short period of time: When you do this, you probably prevent people who follow you from reading tweets from other people that they follow. This can be extremely frustrating for a lot of your followers. Do this only when necessary such as giving a minute-by-minute account of an important happening.
6. Not tweeting regularly: Nobody wants to follow a Twitter user who does not post any updates or does not post updates in a long time. Other Twitter users who might want to follow you will probably not do so when they see that your last tweet was a long time ago.
7. Posting the same updates repeatedly or tweeting about inane things: This is self-explanatory. Nobody can bear reading the same things over and over or reading gossip and pointless tweets forever.
8. Using Twitter like an Instant Messaging (IM) client: Sometimes two Twitter users begin a conversation between themselves like they were using a messaging app such as Whatsapp. This sort of behavior may irritate their followers who are also forced to read their tweets. It could cause those followers to stop following them. If you have to enter a conversation with someone, use the Direct Messages option.
9. Protecting your updates: There are good reasons to do this e.g. you want to keep your personal updates private, you want to block spammers, and etc. If you do this though, you are blocking your tweets from public view and blocking potential followers. Do this only when you feel you have sufficient followers.
10. Following too many people: This usually happens when a Twitter user tries to follow everyone that follows him or her. You cannot possibly read all the updates from all of "two thousand people" that you follow and you are likely to miss important tweets as such.
11. Following a larger number of people than you have following you: Nothing says that you are not interesting more than this often overlooked mistake. According to some reports about Twitter usage, people follow-back people who follow them 66% of the time. If you follow 1000 people and have only 50 followers, this only says you are a person who should not be followed. Ever wonder why celebrities are hot on Twitter? It is because they never follow more than a handful of people (who are usually family and close friends or business associaties), compared to the millions of followers that they have.
12. Using auto-follow and auto-responder scripts to build your Twitter followership:Using these sounds like a good idea at first but is really not if you take a better look at how they work. Auto-follow scripts match your tweets to similar tweets from other users. For example, updates from a seller are matched to updates which contain similar terms to create a follow and the usual result is that sellers end up following sellers. What good can this outcome possibly do for any business? Using an auto-responder defeats Twitter's primary aim which is social networking. It depersonalizes your interactions with other people on the network. Auto-responder updates are usually static, impersonal and identical and all these tell people that you do not consider them worthy of your time.
Avoid the above mistakes to have a happy Twitter experience.
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