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Do you even know you are doing it?

I’d like to give many the benefit of the doubt and that they just don’t know they are spamming our twitter walls. I’m not talking about the obvious people that hit you with a link and no conversation. I’m talking about what has become a bigger problem in the last year.

Now this is probably going to be the start to a long line of social media oriented posts. Let me go out here on a limb and state that this is all in my opinion and from years of using and watching twitter. It’s also from talking to friends about the issues I come across.  Friends that have been on twitter for ages as well.

Your RSS Feed

I feel like I’m going to be explaining myself a lot in this post. I need to nip that in the butt right now.

I’m not opposed to your rss feed going through your twitter profile. I’m not opposed to your friends rss feeds posting to your twitter profile. I’m not opposed to you retweeting other posts you find and like.

What I am opposed to is nothing but feed links from you with no personal interaction.

There is nothing wrong with setting up your friends feed to post to your wall and therefor I see it on mine. I’ve found some great blogs that way and enjoyed a lot of posts because of it. Posts in topics I may not have searched out if they weren’t put in front of me.

Again, it’s about the interaction.

You Lost Interest in Twitter

I understand that twitter is not for everyone. It’s very different from facebook. It took me quite a while to get used to facebook because I started out on twitter first. They are completely different animals in my opinion.

Many marketers and bloggers created twitter accounts because they heard they needed to. They got excited and joined everywhere they were “supposed” to and then the overwhelm sets in. It’s a lot of work to keep multiple social media accounts going. A heck of a lot of work. It takes away from the meat of your business and you have to keep an eye on that.

Others have been on twitter for years but for some reason lost interest or decided they didn’t have time.

Leaving your twitter account open and just posting feeds ruins your image.

Twitter is Social

You understand what social means correct? It means you are interacting with others. Autofeeds are not interaction. They show you are ignoring your twitter followers if that is the only thing on your wall.

While you may have lost interest in twitter and maybe even forgotten about it, let alone that your feed automatically posts there, those of us on twitter have not. When your wall changes to only feeds, I notice. I don’t follow a whole ton of people on my personal account. It’s obvious when you have lost interest and moved away.

I don’t go search you out on a different media. I unfollow you on twitter and then your business, blog or company is no longer on my mind. Quite the opposite of what you want to happen. Definitely the opposite of why you joined twitter to begin with.

Pushing Your Links

It’s bad enough that the rss feed is the biggest thing we see on your wall. But then you also forgot that you put up automatic tweets. Once a day or once a week, here comes the same message. Over and over again and it’s quite obvious since the other tweets are your feed. Now you are absolutely getting off my wall.

Many people think that twitter is only about your links. That you should use good hashtags and load a link in there and you’ve used it appropriately. Let me set you straight and this isn’t my opinion. Twitter is about making relationships and sharing. Yes, we share our biz’s and I’m behind you doing so. But it can’t be the only thing you do on there.

Long Line of RT’ing Links

The only thing worse than tweeting nothing but links or mostly links, is RT’ing nothing but your friends tweets with only links.

Think on this one. All the previous links I can forgive for walking away from twitter and leaving things to autopost. But retweeting (RT) means you did it on purpose.

You literally just filled my wall full of nothing but links and you did it on purpose. Unless there’s a new app, plugin or service I haven’t heard about, you can only manually RT tweets. If you can take the time to do 20-30 RT’s in a row, then why do you never take the time to post something that isn’t a link?

Some Ideas to Keep Followers Happier

You can schedule tweets that don’t boast a link. Programs such as hootsuite are easy to use to schedule posts as conversation starters. But don’t forget, you may get @reply’s and if you ignore them you’re customer service may come under fire.

If you always have a bunch of RT’s to catch up on each day, think about scheduling those as well. Don’t hit us with them all at once. We’ll just ignore your name when it pops up. If they come out every hour or couple of hours they are more likely to be seen. Just one more reason why I love hootsuite.

If you don’t plan on being around on twitter then try to remember to go stop as many autoposts as possible. Sure, keep your biz feeds going there but don’t also post other people’s. You need to realize that when people find your profile page it will be nothing but your posts showing. When I see nothing but feeds I don’t bother following that person or business.

As you see, I’m not opposed to having things autopost to your twitter account. The exact opposite actually. I do a lot of auto-tweeting in order to manage my time a little better. I get sucked into conversations on twitter really easy. lol Especially after many years of building relationships on there. Auto-tweeting keeps me from checking in as often while I’m supposed to be working on other things.

Go to your wall right now and see what your tweets look like. If you’re one of the offenders, FIX IT. You’re annoying the crap out of us that enjoy a little time on twitter. Have you noticed this when you’re at twitter too?

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