2013 was a great year for Twitter, we saw some great Twitter tools for business, Twitter Analytics, Vine marketing, enhanced Twitter widgets, Twitter IPO and many more things that made the tool more powerful than before. We also shared how Twitter is better than Facebook sometime back. If you are still doubtful about Twitter being a gold-mine, it’s a must read.
It is common knowledge that everyone makes mistakes, but making mistakes online is embarrassing for businesses. Some mistakes on social media even have the very real potential to get your business trending – for all the wrong reasons.
Hence, before you start sending tweets, you must be aware of these common mistakes. Here is a list of 7 Twitter mistakes you can’t afford to make in 2014 as Twitter will keep getting matured and will evolve more over and if you still land-up doing these mistakes, you are digging your own grave.
1. The biggest mistake people do on Twitter via @garyvee
I recently bought the book “Jab Jab Jab, Right Hook” by Gary Vaynerchuk and let me tell you, it’s an awesome book. A lot and lot of learning experience for me, maybe I will write a review on that also very soon. The number one mistake that almost everybody makes on Twitter is starting your tweet with ‘@’. If you want all of your followers to see your tweet in their stream, you must not start a tweet with a @username. If you do so, you are restricting your tweet to only the @username and your mutual friends.
Yup that means all those tweets you sent starting with @ weren’t visible to the audience you thought would see it. You should only use @username when you are interacting with one of your friends on something you don’t want to shout-out.
Check out this lovely presentation by @garyvee below-
2. #Too #Many #Hashtags
Using too many hashtags is a common mistake, particularly made thinking that when potential customers or customers are searching it will be easy for the tweet to pop up. On the contrary, too many hashtags make your update difficult to read. It also shows that you’re really not focused about the message and the conversations and you also might end-up loosing some followers like me. Generally people like to include a maximum of three hashtags in a tweet, and that is fair enough.
3. Making Tweets Too long
Are you a Facebook fanatic? Twitter is not like that for sure. Believe it or not, a 140 character update on Twitter is actually the best thing. Don’t use tools to make your tweets lengthy and bulky unless that’s the only option left for you. Studies state those under 100 characters get a much higher engagement rate. Additionally, when a tweet is too long, and takes up the entire 140 character count, there is no room for a ReTweet. You either skip that update or remove original @username, either of them are not helpful.
4. Mistakes while handling Multiple accounts
If you manage more than one Twitter account (even just yours and your business’), be very aware and conscious of what Twitter feed you are posting to. Accidentally posting your personal tweets to your business’ handle happens more often than you might think. So always be alert, you can avoid a major PR disaster for your company.
For Example: Nokia believes in ‘Connecting with people’ but after this Twitter debacle, they didn’t win that many hearts! Within minutes the tweet was deleted, but not quick enough to avoid a plethora of retweets and the inevitable screenshots that have being taken. Nokia quickly apologized and professed their love for their NZ fans. No explanation or the source of the tweet has been offered since then!
A Good Tip: Use different tools for handling your brand and personal accounts. Like we use Hootsuite for @allinsights and Tweetdeck for our clients.
5. Obsessed with your products
If you spend most of your time on Twitter promoting your business, people will first ignore you; and then “unfollow” you. No one likes a person who talks about himself, his business or his product most of the time. Just because you got some quantitative results last month doesn’t mean that you have to turn your entire strategy to talk only about your products. Don’t forget that Twitter is a ‘social’ network. You must learn how to communicate and build good relationships before you start bombarding them with promotions.
6. Ignoring Twitter Analytics
Twitter now offers access to analytics to understand your Twitter followers better. Twitter Analytics is a must as with those insights, which allow users to track things like the geographic and interest based classification of followers and the hours your followers are most active. Understanding this type of information can help you plan more effective marketing campaign. All this information is of vital importance so it gives you detailed analysis of your brands entire structure which will then help you draft a strategy more effectively.
7. Easy numbers
A lot of brands being obsessed with numbers and they want to show a great amount of followers on their Brand page, they get indulged with some social media agencies that help them getting a lot of followers really quick. Well most of them create Fake ID’s so just to increase the numbers and there will be hardly any engagement. When you will really understand the value of Twitter, sooner or later, you will then regret your decision and will want to start from scratch. We did a research here with some brands on Twitter having more Fake followers than the real/active ones.
With all the noise on Twitter, make sure that your business stands out for the right reasons. Thus with this list provided above you can save yourself from making these blunders and shine for all the right reasons in 2014!
What do you think? Have you made any of these mistakes? Have you seen other brands doing such mistakes on Twitter? Do share your views with us below.