The Side Note

If you aren’t familiar with the “Quick and Dirty Tips” series, I highly recommend you check it out. It’s a sequence of blog posts, podcasts and newsletters from experts in everything from grammar and nutrition to digital marketing and dog training. The experts break down complicated subjects to make them easier to understand and apply to your everyday life.

My favorite series is “Grammar Girl.” I love receiving her daily grammar tips in my inbox, and you wouldn’t believe the things I learn—and I thought I knew a lot about grammar. But I digress!

I’m writing today to talk about the top Twitter mistakes to avoid, according to “The Digital Marketer,” one of the “Quick and Dirty Tips” series.

The Digital Marketer

If you’re using Twitter for professional purposes—to promote your business, build yourself professionally, or market a product or service—you should definitely pay attention to how you’re using it. Repeated mistakes online can cost your company and your reputation.

Without further ado, following are seven of the top Twitter mistakes to avoid from “The Digital Marketer,” Aliza Sherman:

1. Following a ton of people. There is no need to follow a lot of people on Twitter, especially if you are just starting out. Of course, “a lot” can mean different things to different people. I keep the number of people I follow under 2000. Others keep it below a few hundred. Still others follow only a dozen people on Twitter. Know your information overload threshold. Following too many people can send you into a mental tailspin. And it also makes you look suspiciously like a Twitter spam artist, so just don’t go there.

2. Shaming someone for unfollowing you. Stop taking it so personally if people follow you or don’t follow you, unfollow you, or never follow you back. Contrary to popular belief, it is not always about you. And calling out in your Twitterstream when someone doesn’t follow you back or chooses to unfollow you makes you look like a spoiled child who had his toy taken away. Very unprofessional.

3. Forwarding links through Direct Messages. With the onslaught of Twitter spam, it just isn’t good communications practice to share a link with someone privately in their DM box. If you cannot share a link publicly, then email it to them—and include something in the message that is personal so they know it is not spam. DMs are terrible for extensive communications anyway–take it to email for best results.

4. Crafting tweets too long to retweet. One annoying thing on Twitter is when you read a tweet that you really want to repeat—or retweet—in your own Twitter stream to your followers, and it is way too long to retweet properly. There is a very simple formula for crafting a retweet that I use: Take the number of letters in your Twitter handle. Add five. Then subtract that number from 140. That will give you the number of characters for your retweetable tweets.

5. Overtweeting contests and giveaways. Everyone loves a freebie, but you’ll lose friends and followers quickly if you keep retweeting contest and giveaway tweets—unless that is what you are known for. We can all get overzealous with our retweeting—I personally tend to do a lot of it in the morning when I’m just starting my day—but remember that what you retweet is a reflection on you.

6. Automating a “Thanks for Following Me” message. Contrary to popular belief, canned “Thank you for following me” messages are not looked upon favorably. They come across as canned at best and creepy at worst. If you cannot take the time to review who is following you—and Twitter emails this information to you—and then send individualized messages to them, don’t bother. No message is better than a fake message.

7. Being overly commercial. Want to put out a lot of salesy tweets to get people to buy your products or hire you? Just don’t do it. Twitter isn’t about broadcasting commercial messages. It is about listening to what others are saying, thoughtfully engaging others in conversation, contributing meaningfully to the conversation, and building real contacts and connections. Gone are the old ways of advertising and marketing. Today it is about real conversations between real people.

I love how Aliza describes Twitter and what it’s really about. She says, “Twitter is about listening to what others are saying, thoughtfully engaging others in conversation, contributing meaningfully to the conversation, and building real contacts and connections.” I couldn’t agree more. Being thoughtful with your Twitter posts will not only help you promote your cause, but it will also help you save face.

If you have other common Twitter mistakes to add to this list, we’d love to hear from you. Include your comments here.