I’ve been on Twitter for a year and a half or so, and it never ceases to amaze me how unsophisticated the majority of my new followers could be. During the course of my Twitter career, I’ve had the pleasures of following some of the greatest Social Media gurus, search engine optimization experts, and a ton of others in the web industry. Whatever community you belong to, there will always be moronic spammers that have no interest in anything except exploiting the community just to promote their garbage products.
Many new tweeters make the same mistakes, over and over again:
1. Useless Tweets - Telling me that you got up to get a glass of water at 10:45pm from txt, and then Sitting back down at your desk at 10:46 is absolutely unnecessary. Please do yourself a favor and spare us the small details of your life. Now, if on your way to get a glass of water, you happen to see a wildfire break out across the street, then by all means, Tweet about it. If your Twitter following has anyone in your local area, it could be important for them to know.
2. Default Profile Picture - This is a dead giveaway to let everyone you follow that you are brand-new-this-very-day, a spammer, or just a moron. It takes less than 45 seconds to upload a photo of yourself, and use the Twitter profile picture cropper to make a good snapshot.
3. Default Twitter Color Scheme - This is not as big of a deal as the profile picture, but if you want people to follow you, you better show that you are different than every other useless Tweeter out there. Use a solid color if you can’t get a good layout. Mix it up a bit!
4. Following to Followed Ratio - Ok, we know not to follow you because you are following 500 people, and only 9 following you. Oh, and your 3 updates which provide nothing substantial. Avoid it. Search for people you have something in common with at first. Converse with people using the @reply function. It’s not hard, you just have to think of the big picture.
5. Empty Bio - When you give no indication of who you are, where you are located, or even what you are interested in, you are disadvantaging yourself from the get-go. Take the minute-and-a-half it takes to complete your small biography.
6. A Link to Your MySpace/Facebook Profile - Congratulations, you’ve indicated that you’re in a popularity contest.
7. Your Updates are Completely, and Utterly Useless - You may think that everyone on earth is dumber than a bag of rocks, with the exception of you. Sorry to say, you’re very wrong. You cannot fool us twitter/internet/social media savvy folk with your affiliate link to the Acai Berry offer that you are so desperate to promote. I garuntee you will get no leads via Twitter by just spamming.
8. Every Tweet You Make is Loaded with Hashtags - Because you think you are oh-so-smart, you try to take advantage of Twitter’s Search function, but loading your moronic Tweets with #hashtags. It’s not only irritating to look at, but when you have more than two hashtags in a single Tweet, I am less inclined to accept you as a follower.
9. Flooding your Tweets - This is probably the most irritating thing to see. If you are using a Mac, with Twitteriffic, and Growl notifications, it’s infuriating to see a flood of your updates filling my screen. Your tweets are full of links, either to social media, or direct news sources, but CMON! Yes, it is important to share social media stuff on Twitter because it gets it promoted, but I feel like doing murder when you flood. Don’t be a flooder.
My hopes are to help those of you that have just recently joined the Twitter community, to become better at it, and to be less annoying. This should increase your followers slowly and steadily over time. As someone that does internet marketing Victoria, I can say Twitter is a great tool to know how to use well, to get the most out of your retweets.
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9 reasons why you aren’t being followed on twitter (haha, I have the default twitter color scheme) http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT @rebeccakelley: 9 reasons why you aren’t being followed on twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 reasons why you aren’t being followed on twitter (newbies should HAVE to read this!) http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql RT @rebeccakelley
RT @rebeccakelley: 9 reasons why you aren’t being followed on twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
#9 #reasons #why #you #aren’t #being #followed #on #twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql (via @rebeccakelley & @gregfinn)
9 Reasons why You aren’t being Followed on Twitter - http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql (via @pepelu12)
Heheh. I agree. I’ve only recently joined twitter just to check it out. First thing I did was add an image after setting my profile up. LoL. I only ended up here when I found my site Twittered by ya. Cheers. And I dont twitter much as Im too busy doing code work. I probably wont follow many people at all as I work to hard at my code work.
I completely agree with the flood thing. I hate people who use twitterfeed and have it set to post 5 things. Best way to get unfollowed too. It is really annoying when you get those people who do multiple twitterfeeds into their account and you get every thing they like, digg, stumbleupon, google share, etc…
I’m not having trouble being followed but I only have fourteen of the pictures up of those I’m following on my profile page. Plenty on my home page. Did I do something wrong?
excellent article. you’ve given me some excellent ideas. thank you!
I find it interesting how so many have decided to post nothing more than quotes from other “famous” people. I like to see more than just something posted telling me how motivated I should feel. How about some humor, or some news, or some facts and figures, or something interesting about now.
Did you really need to tell us all TWICE that you “work too hard at your code work?” You also misspelled “too”. The next time you make an attempt at sounding smart……… make sure you actually do!
Aw, sheesh, I just discovered hashtags!!! lol
Enjoyed reading the 9 reasons and had a few chuckles. Keep informing. Please.
Regards,
Malcolm
I’m glad I got some things right. Thanks for the tips. I’ll be mindful, but I think I’ve done ok. I have avoided people who were guilty of those. I basically don’t follow anyone who has a squeeze page, but their own blog or site. You are make sure we keep the social in “social” marketing.
Very instructing! Thanks!
damn… instructive
Thanks for the insightful tips. We’ll lay off the multiple hashtags from now on!
TheTripChicks
http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
I disagree about #1. It all depends on what you want out of Twitter and, for some people, those things matter. Perhaps because it indicates that person is afk or simply because Twitter isn’t just a place for social media ‘gurus’, although there sure are enough..
The biggest mistake is to think that the quality of a Twitter Profile depends on the number of followers one have. Ideally there are clouds of Twitter Profiles which share the same style and interests. If there is a group of user which like to have this default picture and style, why not? If there is a group which likes to share every detail of their live, why not? We should not try to make all followers uniform. Of course also the rules for following people are individual. So you described your rules and another one may have different rules. There’s nothing good or bad here.
9 resons why you aren’t being followed lol! http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 reasons why you aren’t being followed lol! http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
You’re right about it being ‘what you want out of Twitter’, but there are a few different levels of Twittering to consider, like using it to connect with personal friends, meaning a low-range of followers (1-40 or so), because if you have a lot of followers, chances are you aren’t tweeting about stubbing your toe, getting a bandaid, and crying a little - but instead you are choosing to involve yourself in a community of shared interests.
I really appreciate the comments folks, thanks a lot!
check this out if you want to know why no one is following you. http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
I’ve got a few follow requests sitting in my inbox, and you’ve just described many of the factors I’ll consider as I go through those users and decide whether or not to click the follow button in return. I want to follow back the majority of my followers, but not if their only mission is to sell me something, or worse yet to link to a video that will show me how to make money fast using Twitter.
Cat & monettenom, I agree that there is no one “right way” to use Twitter, but I think what the author is suggesting is that your Tweets should offer some sort of value or information. Regarding #1, even if you are only Tweeting to your 10 best friends, they probably don’t care when you get a drink of water or clip your toenails. That doesn’t mean you can’t Tweet things about what you are doing in your life, it just suggests that such Tweets should tell us something about you.
Personal Tweets show the human side, updating our friends on our real life activities and letting our newer Twitter friends get more of a sense of our personality, interests and hobbies. Yesterday for example I Tweeted that I was going to take my camera for a walk and was trying to decide where to go. This may not seem like much more than the drink of water Tweet, but it tells people something about me. New friend learn that I like photography and old friends can respond with their suggestions, or tell me where they are going on their own photo hikes. Sometimes a little detail makes a difference.
While there are no ground rules on how to Tweet, I think what the author has done here is laid out some best practices that will make the Tweeting experience more pleasant for most people. Cheers. @hacool
Great post
I really think the bio part is important. I almost never follow a person with a empty bio. Empty bio, following 3000 and only have 200 followers is normally a nofollow for me.
I take umbrige to the whole concept of your article. According to What is Twitter? on the actual sign in page “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Not sure I want to emulate a
I take umbridge to the whole concept of your article. According to What is Twitter? on the actual sign in page, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” It’s againt my insticts to allow “followers” who are not my friends, family and co-workers. Although I have to admit that I like following news feeds.
Solid stuff
For the Newbie and Veteran Twit
Folks are gonna do what they’re gonna do
Noone can really pollute your stream
Without you allowing it
Just don’t pour Oil into it
Messes up the Birds
Something awful!
Thank you, great insight. Still, if my biggest interest is aphrodisiac chocolates , and i do want to promote them, because i think its an amazing and fun product, i will be probably twitting mostly about that. I guess, with time, we will find a good balance - may be a special groups where people talking about chocolate. Twitter is still very new…
I am new to Twitter, have already found some wise folks to follow. Always a pleasure-I daresay an “honor” when they follow me. For me it’s not about having a lot of followers. I am finding it to be a great resource tool for hot information, inspiration, and great humor. I would have to apply the quality vs quantity standard here…
9 Reasons You May Not Be Being Followed: http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://is.gd/t0Fr (retweeted 45x http://is.gd/thEN )
RT @Retweetist: 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://is.gd/t0Fr
9 guidelines for Twitter “newbies”, http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
Good advice! A profile picture, a bio and at least a handful of interesting tweets are a great start to developing relationships with other folks on twitter. I also agree that the following to follower ratio is important. The closer it is to 1:1 for “normal” people (i.e. not celebs) the better indicator to me that your tweet stream has good value. I also agree that “good value” is a very personal thing on Twitter. By choosing who to follow, we all get to highly customize our experience on Twitter. As for useless tweets, if you have cultivated a following, throwing in a useless tweet every now and then is fine and even entertaining in my opinion. (example: Can’t believe I’m on my 10th cup of coffee!). Just don’t let that be the meat of your tweets.
My general modus operandi is to be kind on Twitter. If I don’t like someone’s tweets, bio or avatar, I can gently make a recommendation or I can choose to unfollow. No need to be nasty about it.
See you in the stream! @goodlaura
Some Twitter tips … http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
I don’t care if people want new followers or not, but this article should be a must read BEFORE being granted a Twitter account. It would make Twitter a better place to be. Now I have to go update my background.
RT @BodyByChocolate: RT @Retweetist 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://is.gd/t0Fr (retweeted 45x http://is.gd/thEN )
RT 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql … et qui ennervent qu’on se le dise
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://is.gd/t0Fr
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT@dpbkmb9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 reasons you arent being following on twitter- http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://is.gd/t0Fr (retweeted 45x http://is.gd/thEN )
The main reason to connect with people is to share. Now it all depends what you want to share, and then follow those who are will to share with you, as well follow you.
However, we must try not to think too narrow. It is surprising what people are looking for, even a sixteen year old nowadays will be interested in investments, and if you specialise in that area, what not sharing with everybody. They will follow you if they see you can offer them them to better their lives.
RT @pepelu12 RT 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter” http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql)
9 reasons why you aren’t being followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
Reading: “9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter” ( http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql )
RT @dpbkmb 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql [New to Twitter? This is a MUST-read!]
RT @LilianChisca 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed → http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
Yikes! I better get my photo updated from the default. I’m not a spammer or a moron. Hopefully those following me aren’t either.
Well, that’s what everyone keeps mentioning to me. I personally don’t think that there are different levels of Twitter. I follow 500 odd people and tweet about personal stuff, links, blog promotion, projects like #TwitLight [sorry for the ad!], work related things and the like. I connect to everyone from RL friends, internet ‘friends’, strangers, family, co-workers, housemates, celebrities on mine plus tweet about a wide range of hobbies from gaming to music to reading and knitting. And I’ve used Twitter at conferences/meetups or even just to say I’ll be late to dinner with whoever I’m meeting up with in a @reply/DM.
So personally I don’t feel like I fit any ’shoe’ and it always seems that people want to put other Twitterers into boxes for convenience when in many cases that’s not the case.
monnettemon
That rarely happens though or rather I’ve noticed that the people I’m following have a very wide variety of interests.
Heidi:
And who says ‘I’m going for a coffee’ isn’t valuable? On one hand it means the person’s afk for a while thus unreachable. Or tweets about the weather as there’s some kind of ritual with some of the more photography enthusiasts on my Twitter that post a picture of the sunrise/weather every morning. Or going to bed which again indicates someone won’t be around to answer a query.
I suppose [and bear with me, need more coffee, brain isn't working yet!] it also comes down on your views of Twitter as publishing vs dialogue tool. According to Twanalyst my conversation % is around 85%.
That quote from monettenom sums it up pretty well though, too many people these days seem to just raise their finger and claim what can and cant be done, especially now that Twitter’s literally jumping the shark.
My original comment wasn’t fully directed at this post, more at the situation in general and I’ve so far been unable to gather my thoughts enough to make my own blog post about it!
Just re read my comment and realise it may be coming across as a bit confrontational which is definitely not intended! I’m not a morning person..
Also, has this blog’s theme changed since yesterday?
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
@Cat
Yeah, new blog, still undergoing certain design changes, it’s only going to improve from here on out!
@admin - Good choice going with Thesis for the redesign… Anywhoo
You can also add:
DON’T RETWEET EVERYTHING YOU SEE… I have seen people RT what other people had for breakfast. WTF?!? What is the importance of that?!?
Good stuff
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter - http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
Great. Twitter’s made a moron out of me. RT @Ecoxianlife: http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 razones para que no te sigan en Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql algunas muy graciosas
i couldn’t agree with you more about the reasons why people aren’t being followed on twitter,who wants to know that they woke up @ like 2 in the morning to go to the bathroom or get a drink and couldn’t get back to sleep? LAME!,or that their bored and have nothing to do,everyone including myself gets bored every now and again but that’s why i joined twitter to make new friends and maybe expand my coffee biz by making people aware of it!,that’s what i think people should use twitter for instead of posting useless garbage like the above stated! lol awesome blog look forward to reading another lol maybe this blog will open people’s eyes and show them what their doin wrong lol,feel free to follow me on twitter if you like (Kita82)
Great Article for New Tweeters http://bhlaab.com/twitter/9-reasons-why-you-arent-being-followed-on-twitter
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter - http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT @dpbkmb 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
[twitter] 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql tahnks for the tips
RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql Thanks for the tips…
Great advice. Social networking is a brand-new thing for me and as a Newbie I’m not up on what’s acceptable and what’s frowned upon. A little guidance is appreciated by those of us who are still trying to “learn the ropes”. Cheers!
RT @njection: RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql - oh god yes on number 8!
RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
Retweeting @njection: RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT @njection: RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://is.gd/t0Fr
RT @TweepTips: 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://is.gd/t0Fr
Why aren’t twitters following you back? http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql Except Oprah, who only wants to hear from 11.
I was 8 for 10, but had to break 1 to send this to you. http://is.gd/t0Fr Thanks @cheriwilliams for the link
RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
RT @tweetmeme 9 Reasons Why You Aren’t Being Followed on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cxa8ql
Great tips, advice and info - I myself have actually made a few of these beginner mistakes, and am on my way to Twitter success after reading these crucial tips. Thanks a lot Bhlaab!
ok, sometimes I am guilty for Hashtags overusing
but the rest should apply for me 