Twitter can be a finicky place. But why would people stop following you on Twitter? There are actually quite a number of reasons. Eliminating some of the common mistakes is the key to using it to be profitable. Here are five mistakes you could be making that give people a reason to stop following you:
Mistake #1: Overselling
So many businesses send out one sales tweet after another. The whole objective of each one is to push their link.
People can smell that a mile away. Some businesses even have an automatic message when someone subscribes, instantly asking them to buy something through a direct message.
This will repel visitors faster than anything else. Constant selling is one of the biggest mistakes business owners make. Obviously you want to make money. However, you won’t be profitable if you do nothing but push the sale.
All your recent posts are on display. So if your last twenty have been blatant sales messages, people will stay far away from you and generally not even follow. Personally I’m pretty quick to unfollow if you send me a non-personalized DM when your program tells your twitter account to auto-follow me. For me personally I equate it to spam. DM’s are for private messages when you have built some kind of conversation and want to take things private.
What you should do: You want to focus on creating value. Sure, every now and then you can include a tweet asking people to buy something and put up your latest blog post. Just make sure to have at least 2-3 interactive tweets between those links.
Mistake #2: Being negative
Some people claim that you want to sell based on fear. While it is true that this can be effective, it’s far more productive to focus on positive stories.
Inspiring people to rise above their circumstances is the best way to sell. Therefore, the more positive you can be, the better. Nobody likes to be around someone who’s negative.
If you notice, the people who tend to have many friends are the most enthusiastic and positive people. The same principle goes for Twitter.
What you should do: Show how to turn negatives into positives. Take a life or business negative and ask your twitter account how they would adapt to overcome it.
Mistake #3: Offending others
If you don’t retweet (RT) someone, and instead use their message as your own, you will offend others. They will then stop following you. Not only that, they will probably call you out and this will bring a very negative image to your account and site. Proper etiquette is very important.
Also, don’t harass anyone by only replying to them with a link.
What you should do: Is use the RT button to build some relationships. RT things you think your own account would like to read and see how many followers you may pick up from that other account. Reply to other people’s tweets with great information so again, people are interested in following you for more. This can lead to blog post ideas for you to create even more information on the topic being discussed.
Mistake #4: Being boring
Twitter is all about community. That’s what it was designed to be. It wasn’t started for the sake of helping businesses.
When you recognize that and get involved in the conversation, people will be more inclined to follow you. When you show no interest in others, people will stop following you. This generally leads to people also making mistake #1 because the only thing being posted to their account is the auto post from their blog account.
What you should do: set a goal to reply to at least 10 people a week to start with if you are having a difficult time getting social media into your day. Then also set a goal of posting 1-2 non-link tweets to your account sporadically. You can schedule these tweets by using hootsuite. I absolutely LOVE hootsuite and will go in to more posts about it’s benefits, but for now you can sign up for the free account and still schedule your tweets.
Mistake #5: Not including personality
People don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people. Therefore, telling interesting stories about your life is key. If you can tie it into your niche, all the better.
Now this can go both ways. I have multiple accounts. One account is all a mess with business and personal, but it’s got a ton of personal. All my other accounts are more about business. They are more niche focused or I’d like them to come off a little more professional. I do bring my personality to those accounts, however, I’m not posting about my major party weekend to those accounts.
What you should do: bring your personality to your account at all times. If you are sarcastic, then bring it to your tweets. If you are religious, then bring that to your tweets. By being real, you are showing people that they are getting a relationship by buying from you. That means they feel like more than a number and a sale.
The bottom line is, when used the right way, Twitter can be very productive. Avoid these five mistakes, and you will be well on your way to profiting from the site.
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Twitter: motivatingmumuk
says:
That’s a really useful list about what not to do on Twitter. But you do also have to accept that some people just unfollow you for their own crazy reasons. I used to get really upset any time someone unfollowed, but sometimes you just have to let it go. After all, you occasionally unfollow people too, don’t you?
Debbie recently posted..Can a Blue Light Really Ease Symptoms of SAD and Jet Lag?
That is definitely something people need to realize. Don’t take it personally when you are unfollowed. At first it’s difficult because you’re building your numbers, but once the numbers are there it’s easier to ignore. As long as you aren’t doing one of those programs that informs you when people unfollow, then it’s just causing your own headache.
On my business twitter accounts I don’t unfollow as often. Really only for the reasons above. But my main account I don’t auto-followback. I’m very picky because I interact with most of the 280ish followers. I routinely unfollow those that have sent nothing but links for weeks, even if I know them.