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5 Ways to Fail with Twitter

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Social networking and web 2.0 are essential tools for marketing in today’s online world. Social networking and bookmarking sites are springing up faster than you can make a new profile these days. The most prevalent of them all today seems to be Twitter and all reports suggest that there’s no sign of it slowing down in a hurry.

Twitter can be a great tool to spread your message, build your brand, and promote your products but as I pointed out previously social networking needs to remain just that, social. Any other use and you’ll quickly alienate your followers to the point that either they take no notice of you or they unfollow you.

Of course there will always be some people who really don’t care about how to play the game nor how to get the most out of what they do. They don’t mind wasting their time.

So here’s 5 ways that you can waste your time and be certain you fail with Twitter.

1. Greet new followers with an automated message that includes an affiliate link.

I’m not anti auto tweeting but the fastest way to get unfollowed is to send a direct message to your newest followers with a promotion for your latest affiliate offer. Sure you might get a few donkeys who click on your links. You might even get lucky and sell something. I wouldn’t hold my breath though. About all you achieve doing this is coming off looking like an insurance salesman pitching your life insurance at my house party. FAIL!

2. Use multiple accounts and follow the same people on every account.

Obviously there are various reasons why you would use multiple accounts. But what’s the point of following the same people with each of those accounts especially if they are used for unrelated niches, products or purposes? It’s a great waste of time and likely to get all of your accounts unfollowed. FAIL!

3. Use an automated tweet system to send your affiliate links every 5 minutes from all of your accounts.

This one is my favorite. Particularly when combined with the #2 waste of time. You open multiple twitter accounts. You send the same tweets through all of your account to all of your followers. If you have say 5 accounts (which is pretty common unfortunately) and you are following the same people with all of those accounts your sending the same message 5 times to each of your followers. FAIL!

4. Auto tweet nothing but affiliate links all day everyday.

There are so many people doing this lately it’s almost become a joke. Social media is what the name suggests. It’s meant to be social. It’s a way to build relationships by being someone of interest or of value. Auto tweeting nothing but affiliate links is not social, is not going to build relationships, and provides no value to your followers. FAIL!

5. Try to come up with your own original quotes that make no sense at all.

Here’s an example of a tweet I saw today: “Do you realize if it weren’t for Edison we’d be watching TV by candlelight?“. Even a half wit can realise the redundancy of this. Watching TV by candle light? Seriously….and are we powering the TV with candles too? FAIL!

Twitter-Fail.com is great site that is dedicated to outing the absolute best twitter failures. Check it out to see if you’ve made the cut and been branded a twitter failure. (Thumbnail image is courtesy of Twitter-Fail.com.)

If you don’t want to waste your time then remember that social networking is a means to achieve the 3 fundamentals of marketing. That is to say that people buy from people they know, like, and trust. Twitter gives you the opportunity to become known, to show people that you are a likable person, and to offer some kind of value to your social group so that you can build trust.

Once you’ve achieved those things then you’re far more likely to sell you products, get retweeted, and gain more followers.

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