10 Common Twitter Mistakes to Avoid

Twitter mistakes – we all make them. With all the noise on Twitter, how do you make sure that your organization’s Tweets stand out from the crowd? Here are some common Twitter mistakes that people make and how to avoid making them.

Common But Easy to Avoid Twitter Mistakes

1. “Bursty” Tweeting – It’s much better to spread your content out throughout the course of the day rather than publishing, say, five new Tweets within five minutes — and then not Tweeting anything for hours. You can avoid this Twitter mistake by using a tool that evenly distributes your stockpile of Tweets across a timeline.

2. Linking to biased content – If you’re going to drive people to your blog or to other Website content, it’s much better if the content is informational rather than promotional. If your linked Website content is simply a slam on your competition, visitors will probably not be inclined to follow you.

3. Not leaving enough space for Retweets – If you want your content to be Retweeted, make sure to leave enough spaces in your original Tweets for traditional Retweeting — specifically,  leave room a character count of RT<space>@<your handle><space>.  People don’t want to spend time deciding what words to remove from Retweets.

4. Recycling rather than repurposing of content – It’s fine to repeatedly reference the same blog post over time in your Tweets, but avoid continually rehashing the exact same text. Mix up your “headline”.

5. Not creating catchy references to what’s behind your URLs - If possible, come up with a title that’s going to hook the person who’s reading the Tweet and make them curious about the content they will see if they click the shortened URL.

6. Not Retweeting others’ content – Tweeting your own company’s content is a great idea, but make sure you also Retweet content from other people and other companies that’s relevant to your audience.

7. Not involving enough users in creating content – There are people in your organization with great ideas. Let them contribute to your Twitter stream. A social media management tool can help with this.

8. Not actively seeking out engagement opportunities – Don’t just wait for mentions of your brand. Look for Tweets that have keywords that are common in your industry. Some of these might reveal questions that you can provide authoritative @Replies to.

9. Not @Replying to customers who report issues – After our ISP originally set up their Twitter profile last year, they ignored customer Tweets for months, even when customers were Tweeting about outages. Don’t make this Twitter mistake – If you set up a Twitter presence, be prepared to respond to customers.

10. Overlooking Web analytics – Your Web analytics can give you the company names of site visitors who visited your site but did not take any action (“Prospects” in marketing terms). If a site visitor’s company has a Twitter presence, you may want to follow their profile. Your analytics can also tell you which of your Tweets’ links were most popular over a given time period.

Avoiding Twitter mistakes such as these can lead to more followers and drive more visitors to your Website.