Do's and Don'ts of Twitter- Buzz Pick

Twitter is the much talked about (and in some circles maligned) tool.

Someone called twitter a time waster. And no one cares about how you ate a bagel for breakfast but ran out of cream cheese and got pissed off because your kid ate the last of it.

This is only true in some cases.

When you’re using twitter just to keep up with your friends and family this may be something they identify with because they may have experienced it themselves.

But if you’re using twitter for business and marketing purposes your followers definitely don’t care about your bagel eating habits, nor your lunchtime habits, nor you being stuck in traffic.

They care about things relevant to your business and that specific topic and market your in.

So what you want to do is sprinkle in amongst your tweets your very best blog posts, new announcements about your company and products, and good articles and information from other companies and bloggers in your market.

Even local or online events in your marketplace because this will build you up as the go-to guy/gal for info about your marketplace. You can be the hub of info in your market (a good thing to be).

Twitter at its core is a social tool and so you want to provide value and be part of the conversation with the followers interested in what you have to offer.

It’s not a traditional e-mail list where you can just send out one offer after another of your own products.

You could do that but your success rate is going to be very low and you’ll see your number of followers dwindle. So I’m recommending you don’t use it that way.

Like any social tool, and really any tool in general, you want to add and provide value to those who are paying attention to you.

And in the twitter sphere you do that by finding quality information and resources and alerting your followers to those. Because they may not have ever found them without you and you’ve just saved them time.

One of the other big debates going on right now is whether to use scheduled tweets and automated tweets.

There are a couple of services which come to mind like tweetlater.com and twitresponse.com. I know the guy, Shannon Cole, from twitresponse.com and it’s a good site.

I have no problem with scheduling tweets at times when most of your followers are online and likely to see your tweet. That’s what you want to do anyway…make sure those following you see your updates otherwise what’s the point.

What’s somewhat controversial are a couple of features in tweetlater.com:

the auto follow feature
the auto welcome message

I have to agree the auto follow feature is not something I’d use nor would recommend to you. Because if you get 1,000 or 2,000 followers and you’re following that many you can’t keep up with the conversation because it’s just too massive.

Now some would say this is bad twitter form but with @ messages you can easily keep up with people who are talking to you. And if you form enough of a relationship with them you can follow them back and use direct messaging from there.

My basic rule is to follow around 50 people and grow your relationship deeper with them.

The auto welcome messages may be the most controversial because it allows you to send a basic tweet the moment anyone follows you.

With tweetlater.com you can have basically an autoresponder message tweet which goes out when someone follows you. You can of course direct them to your blog or a sales letter or anywhere else you desire.

And with this service you have the option to send it as an @ message (which shows in your twitter stream) or as a direct message just to your newest follower.

If you’re going to use this I definitely recommend and say it’s mandatory to only send it as a direct message. Because you don’t want a bunch of the same autoresponder tweets showing up in your twitter stream.

Because this just looks amateur and impersonal. The whole thing about twitter is to be more personal and individual with your communications.

When someone looks at your twitter stream and sees a bunch of these auto welcome messages it might alienate them.

And there is no reason for it because when you send a direct message it doesn’t show up in your twitter stream yet your newest follower still gets the message.

One final thought, if you’re going to use this auto welcome I definitely recommend you send them to a blog post or your meatiest article on whatever topic for the business you’re in.

Because you don’t know this person and they’re on twitter to socialize it’s a bad idea to send them directly to an opt in page or a sales letter.

You want to build a bit of a relationship with them first before you direct them to your sales communications.

Follow these basic rules of twitterquette and you’ll have a good experience and get results from your twittering.

Post a comment with your thoughts and things you’re doing on twitter which are getting you good results.