Five Twitter Gaffes Every Small Business Owner Should Avoid
Author: Jamie | Filed under: Social Media
Twitter has been around a long time now. Over the years the way people use it for business has changed considerably.
Despite there being lots of free advice out there on Twitter do’s and don’ts, many startups and small business owners continue to make the following blunders:
- Auto welcome messages
If you want to show there’s a real person behind your Twitter account, starting off a virtual relationship with an automated tweet is not the way to go about it.
I’ve seen so many automated Twitter DMs that tell me to go to the company’s/individuals Facebook page. You may not have time to say a personal hello to all your new Twitter followers each day, but better than then sending them all the same robotic message that lacks personality.
- Protected tweets
Two words; social media. Do I need to say more? Okay, maybe a little bit. Protecting your tweets is a bit like going to a networking event and telling everyone you have something important to say, but you can only tell certain people.
- Highlighting unfollowers
One of my pet peeves on Twitter which I’ve seen more of recently is people using an automated tool to let everyone know who’s unfollowed them recently. In my opinion, it’s like broadcasting a message saying “my tweets are boring” – I just can’t see the point in it – is it supposed to shame those who’ve unfollowed into following again?
- Posting links with no description
I see a lot of tweets that consist of a shortened link and nothing else. You need to add a description to tell people what the content is about. If you do this, the click through rate will go up. A link on its own just looks like your account has been hacked by a spammer.
- No bio/image
The whole point of Twitter is to build relationships with people. It’s pretty hard to do this when nobody knows anything about you and you don’t even have a picture or yourself or company logo.
Twitter isn’t a secret society; if you don’t already have a bio, write one now and let people know about what you do and who you are.
If you liked this post you may also enjoy reading: a beginner’s guide to Twitter hashtags.
Image credit: striatic (license)
I totally agree with you especially on the third part, whats the use your tweets if it’s protected. Visitors cannot relate and contact you if it all locked.
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Hi Olivia, thank you for taking the time to comment. As you say I can’t see any need for protected tweets and am not sure why Twitter allows it as a feature, since it goes against the whole ethos of social media.