Before starting I’m borrowing the words of the professed Jeff Bullas, a true social media “guru”, who by the way doesn’t refer to himself as a “guru”. And thank God for that because it’s a (1-) mistake in Twitter or any other social media platform to refer to yourself as a “guru”. Even worse if you write in third person since it sounds like the preface of a late national hero’s biography.
4 Commandments according to Jeff to avoid losing followers in 140 characters (some have achieved this in less):
1- Think before writing
2- Use common sense
3- Don’t drink while you tweet
4- Don’t write a tweet if you are angry
Now we’re ready, let’s get going!!
1- Twitter’s Bio:
As we pointed out before it’s important to avoid refering to yourself as a “guru” or to do so in the third person as if you were a national hero.
You are not a machine so as to list your “functionalities” therefore try to be as human as possible and use keywords or words that help you connect with the audience of your choice and let others see your personality. People want to know who you are (we’re curious).
It takes you less than 20 seconds to quickly scan your profile, so don’t miss this chance!
2- Profile picture
- Upload a picture that shows your style and personality.
- Choose a picture that has good lighting, and if possible don’t make a close-up out of a cut out of a cut out of a picture’s cut out.
- If you have a picture where you are looking at the camera great (and if you’re smiling so much better).
- Pick a picture that’s not full-lenght, ideally show a close up of your face and a little bit of shoulders, not more. Please refrain from showing anything lower than that, even if you want to show off your abs or a giant cleavage after your last surgery. Try to avoid it or not… But you know what you’ll be attracting… It all depends on what you want.
- If you’ve met all the requirements you should have something like this:
(I don’t really know who this is but it’s a great picture)
Take a look at this LINK to see the dimensions and weight your picture should have.
3- Welcome messages.
This one’s very good, at least he admits it:
4-Too good to be true: excessive self promotion.
This point is self-explanatory. In our previous articles we’ve already talked about this, even in Facebook and even more in Twitter you need to leave aside the excessive ambition of trying to sell services, don’t try to turn your followers into buyers or subscribers. It’s just not the place for that. You can do it occasionally but only occasionally. Otherwise, a profile that does little more than repeat once and again how great the person is, what great things he/she does or has, creates no rapport, much less dialogue or engagement. People choose a product or service not only because of the product or service itself but because of the brand’s experience, the professional, the agency, everything. Whoever sees your profile and reads your biography already knows you are the best at: “making money in only 3 days”. Repeting it on your timeline would be like listening over and over to “Divinyls – I Touch Myself”
5- Tweeting too much:
There are different types of “Serial Tweeters”:
- The one that once a week uploads everything he/she should have published throughout the whole week.
- The compulsive one, he/she constantly re tweets, publishes 8 tweets an hour and tells us everything he/she does or doesn’t do. Did you have salad for lunch? Ahm… I had a pie. How does that matter? Well.. it may give you an idea of what to have for lunch the following day. But let’s see: it’s not wrong to publish personal things since it provides a human touch, it makes your profile more friendly and less professional but… always? NO. It can be interpreted as spam or simply…well… : ANNOYING.
In the last article we reviewed how to come up with a viral tweet and there are statistics that show most people share content that: makes them look smarter, more humanitarian, that improve their image and also contribute something useful and entertaining. Following those parameters, try to emulate this behaviour! 🙂
- The nostalgic one: multi tweets also tend to be rejected by people. Do you want to tell us all about your day, that your baby slipped and fell, that you have a headache, that you’re upset because your football team isn’t doing so good and you want to include every little detail, am I right? Well, that’s not what Twitter is for. So go back to Facebook. Many nostalgic users of the first most popular social network encountered that they can’t sum up in 140 characters what’s happening to them so they start a consecutive tweeting so they can tell us the complete story of their day in two, three or four tweets. Sadly, in these cases it’s best to use Facebook or why not, a blog.
6-Well, ok, there’s no need to be shy either
Neither extreme is good. You need to tweet: we already know not to tweet too much. Nor too little. In order to build an audience you need to be there, participate, share, keep your timeline updated, chat, etc.
Take a look at the times that bring the best results and take advantage of this to program your uploads tidily and daily. I work for program tweets. If you use these tools responsibly and carefully you can make your community grow while avoiding the absence or excess of communication or a robot’s automation (which is true but try and pretend).-
6.1-
Leaving shyness aside doesn’t only apply to publishing tweets but also to have the courage to take the first step and follow other people. At the beginning it will be up to youto propel your profile and in order to do that you need to start cathing people’s attention so they need to know you exist which translates to “follow…”. Now, if your profile is professional and you wish to create a community that truly connects yuo with people with the same interests as you who can contribute to something valuable in the future then you shouldn’t become a “serial follower”, you need to have a filter and know who to add. Use keywords such as “smm”, “marketing”, if that’s your niche. Use tools such as JustUnfollow that allows you to find high profile people and next you’ll be able to know who’s following you, who stopped and useful information that will come in handy to make your profile better.
7- Hashtags: #useitwithtemperance.
Even the man behind the #hashtag, Chris Messina says :“The best hashtags must be used with temperance and when they truly add value and flavour” .
So when you write something that doesn’t add a little something to the sentence and makes it stand out or makes it part of a valuable conversation you better avoid it altogether. Many people use hashtags but they often fail to check whether that hashtag in particular will take them to a conversation that’s related to what they want to say. You need to check them out before using them in order to see whether they work or not. Over-using them won’t make you look smart, cool or innovative. On the contrary, take a look at this hilarious video that reflects on the “indiscriminate” use of “#” with loads of humor.
To sum up:
Share interesting things, don’t bore us. There’s a whole world out there besides yours. Try to avoid arguments, try to comment on more things that just what you eat or don’t eat. Don’t use too many hashtags, don’t write too many tweets but don’t stop doing those things either. Try to have a nice profile picture. Try to avoid drinking while “tweeting”, be part of conversations, thank and greet everybody that greets you.
In case we forgot any details we leave you the following infographic with the title: “How to suck at Twitter”. It’s very practical. 🙂
P.S. 1. I forgot mentioning that a few weeks back we launched a new functionality in this post!
P.S.2. Tell us about your experience! What’s your strategy to get more followers? What techniques have brought better results?