6 Twitter Mistakes Every Business Owners Should Avoid

by Level343 Team on December 14, 2012

There are over 500 million people registered on Twitter and growing. With about 750 tweets posted per second and 300,000 new visitors each day, it just shows how much Twitter has grown since it was first launched in 2006. On the business end, it is important to note that 79% of the Twitter users in the United States say they recommend brands they follow and 67% say that they buy from brands they follow.

If you’re representing a brand, are new to Twitter, and you don’t feel that you’re getting engagement from your consumers, you’ll want to check out these six Twitter mistakes you should be avoiding:

1. You don’t offer value through your tweets

When all you do is tweet about your product or service all day long and self-promote, you can’t really expect much in the way of engagement. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to tweet about your business and the exciting events or campaigns you’re involved in, but you need to balance your tweets with other interesting industry information that’s relevant and helpful to your followers.

2. You never reply to your followers

Checking your @replies everyday is important. Engagement and conversation will help you build relationships with your community. Answering their questions is a great way to be helpful and make your brand human to people. A loyal customer is what every brand strives for and an enthusiastic and engaged community will be a great voice for your brand – they’ll recommend you to their friends and family. Remember positive word of mouth is always the best promotion.

Bonus Tip: One of the best ways to keep track of your mentions is to use applications like Hootsuite. We’ve even created a video to show you how. Managing and Monitoring your Social Networks.

3. You bombard your followers with too many hashtags

Adding hashtags to your tweets allows people to easily find your tweets when searching for particular topics. The problem with some brands is that they abuse them. Limiting your hashtags to one or two per tweet is much better so that you don’t appear spammy. Hashtags are much like blog post tags; when you use too many, they become ineffective. When abused, in fact, they can have the effect of alienating followers.

Bonus Tip: One of our favorite quick peek tool to use for a hash tag measuring tool is Tweet Reach. It’s a great tool with both paid & free versions.

4. You don’t leave enough space to allow people to retweet

Retweeting is a great way to re-share other people’s tweet. If you’d like your followers to share your tweets, make sure to leave room for them to retweet them. Add six characters to your Twitter name, subtract that number from the 140 character maximum tweet length, and limit your tweets to that new maximum length, including links and hashtags.

5. You don’t check links you share

It’s annoying for your followers to click on links you share, only to find out that the link is broken. Make sure the links you share and retweet work before you share them on your stream. Regularly sharing links that don’t work properly can get you unfollowed.

6. You’re inconsistent

We all know that running a business can be daunting and you may say you’re too busy to be active on social media. But having a consistent presence is important on Twitter – don’t just appear when you’re launching a new product or running a promotional campaign. Building relationships with your followers and your potential customers is imperative and that’s best done when it’s two-way communication.

Twitter is a great tool to build your brand and get your past and future customers to engage and talk about you in a positive light. Like any other social media platform, you need to engage, step down from your soap box and stop shouting your message to (at) your customers. We hope the mistakes we’ve highlighted here will help you avoid the pitfalls others have experienced. If you think we missed anything, share your thoughts with us. We’d love to hear from you.

Level343 Team

This account is where everyone involved with Level343 content marketing efforts show up. You can say there is no "I" in this team. Sometimes we will chat about a certain topic with a variation of ideas, suggestions, even opinions. Then one of us will start writing the post, hand it over to someone else who will continue the diatribe. Eventually it ends up on our editors desk who either chops the hell out of it, or you're reading it right now.