This week I read an article on The Contemporary Handmade Alliance about Facebook Faux Pas and it immediately got me thinking about the good and bad behaviors people exhibit on Twitter. So, armed with inspiration from The Contemporary Handmade Alliance as well as Meylah’s community on Facebook, I wanted to highlight some “Do’s” and “Don’ts” you may want to consider while tweeting…
To kick things off in a positive light, let’s start with some “Do’s”:
- Provide quality over quantity! It’s better to have a lower volume of relevant and appealing tweets than a high volume of worthless tweets.
- Use Twitter to network with others in your community. Tara Gentile hit the nail on the head when she commented that “it's important to remember that it's not your customers on Twitter. It's people you should be networking with. Tweeting shop links, new product listings, etc... isn't going to get you much traction, but leveraging a convo with a blogger or learning from your colleagues might get you way more sales down the line.”
- Consider using a free Twitter service to schedule tweets in advance. I use Hootsuite, but no matter which service you select, it’s nice to spread your tweets out over a period of time rather than posting tweets in bulk all at once. This is a major turn off!
- Mix it up! Tweet interesting things…try to inspire your followers to come back for more through humor, quotes, questions, interesting articles and other dialogue. As they say, “variety is the spice of life!” Stay away from tweeting about one thing all the time. If you do it right, you can appeal to a targeted audience without boring the heck out of them.
So now that I’ve equipped you with some “Do’s,” here are a few “Don’ts!”:
- Don’t add links without any other text. For example: just tweeting the link “http://bit.ly/9iOpiN” doesn't add much value. Including a statement like “An introduction to screencasting and how to use it to promote your business...http://bit.ly/9iOpiN” is a much more valuable and intriguing tweet.
- Don’t exclusively self promote. Promote others within your space! It’s exhausting to read about people who are only interested in themselves. Spread the wealth to others by re-tweeting their tweets and engaging in conversation. “What goes around comes around!”
- Don’t take long breaks. Try to be consistent with your tweet schedule. If possible, try to tweet something at least once daily.
Now it’s your turn to offer some insight on what you love and hate to hear by others on Twitter, please share your insights through commenting below!
Main image courtesy of Mike Baird
Just a friendly reminder to enter Meylah's July Contest: What's Your Passion? Name Your Price! for a chance to get your own personalized site at your price...entries will be accepted up until July 31, 2010.
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5 Comments
Great post! I'm just starting to use Twitter again and spent some time the other day looking for people to follow under my new Twitter account (@lisaverdi).
It was shocking just how many Etsy shop owners ONLY tweet about shop updates, blog updates and/or those automatic Facebook updates. Not surprisingly I wasn't interested in following them.
I'd like to suggest another tip under the Do's column. Take the time to create a custom Twitter background (I know there was a great tutorial here on Meylah recently right here: http://meylah.com/meylah/bytesyze/how-to-brand-your-twitter-profile-part-2 ) or hire someone to do make one for you. Think of your Twitter background as free advertising space to get your core message across and your online business card with your main contact info (email, website and blog URL etc). Of the people whose Twitter pages I looked at the other day, hardly anyone was taking advantage of this marketing opportunity!
I'm going to respectfully disagree with Tara about your customers not being on Twitter.
If your customers aren't on Twitter then why are so many stores and companies offering exclusive deals and discounts to their Twitter followers and having great success with it? Just look at @TimtheCheeseMan and @AJBombers for great examples.
I think the wisest thing you can do on Twitter is strike a balance - networking tweets, promotional tweets, just for fun tweets, helpful tweets, retweets, etc. Focus on a combination of tweets, measure the effectiveness of your tweets using analytics like Google Analytics, Bitly or Clicky, tweak as necessary and repeat what works. :D
Happy tweeting!
Heather
I think one of my biggest pet peeves are people that are obviously not only using Twitter to primarily promote their business, but are also obviously not really interested in the personal connections. More specifically, I'm referring to these same people who have 5,385 followers and are also following 5,427 people. If I look at your profile and see that you're not replying to anyone and only talking about what your business is doing, it comes across like a numbers contest where no one is really paying attention to anyone. That said, though, I know people who do have those numbers that ARE reading posts, and, more importantly, engaging with their readers. It just shows.
I may not have a lot of followers, but I know that the connections between those looking at my page and the people whose pages I'm reading are more engaged. I prefer quality versus the quantity in that regard, as well. Perhaps I'm shooting myself in the foot with this thinking, but that's just me.
I am still having trouble getting my mind around what Twitter is...I feel like my grandma (bless her heart)...who calls DVDs "records".
It took me months to "get" FB..and there is still so much to learn about that.
If I tweet and no one is following me...who sees it?
These are great suggestions, Courtney. In terms of networking other bloggers, do you recommend responses to fellow twitterers you don't know at all?
Also, how do you handle posting tweets when on vacation or a business trip? I realize you shouldn't let lots of time lapse between tweets, but I want to take a break from iPhones and computers on weekends and vacation, and may not be able to tweet when on the road for business.