5 Things NOT to do on Twitter

One of the most difficult aspects of learning about Internet marketing is that you have little ability to distinguish cold-hard facts from marketing fluff. You want to absorb as much information as possible without having to fact check every article you read on new marketing techniques.

Unfortunately, in the social media marketing space, you’ll find a lot of “get rich quick” type schemes — but some of those “tips” and “tricks” people peddle won’t actually work, and in some cases will hurt your marketing efforts more than help them.

If you’re looking to get the low-down on what works on Twitter — and more importantly, what doesn’t work — continue on my friend. Below are the most shockingly bad suggestions for building your brand on Twitter.

1.  Try the follow, pause, unfollow trick.

Here’s an easy way to get new followers:  Take advantage of people’s sense reciprocity… NOT!

There’s a quick tip floating around the web saying that to get more followers, you should follow random Twitter users, because they will want to be polite, they will reciprocate and follow you back. You would then wait a few days until they have followed you back, then unfollow those random users. This process continues (typically assisted by some automated tools) until you decided you had enough of a following.

Have you heard of a more awful way to gain followers? Yeah you would send up with a lot of followers, but think about the quality of that follower base. Those people that you essentially tricked into following your brand aren’t the type that’ll want to engage with your business, read your posts, click through to your website, become quality leads, and maybe even become a customer. Especially, if they realize they were scammed into following you in the first place.

If you start off your Twitter strategy with playing tricks like this, you are setting yourself up for failure. Instead, focus your efforts on organically expanding your presence on Twitter.

2.  Buy followers.

Buying followers is big no-no in the social media marketing world. People think that the number of followers is the only number that matters when building their brand on Twitter, but it’s not. If you’re buying followers, chances are—just like in the tip above—that they are not quality followers. A large quantity of followers does not convert to increased website traffic, lead generation, and customers. Again, focus on gaining your follower-base organically, and using Twitter to engage with people actually interested in your brand and drive them through your conversion funnel.

3.  Hashtag everything!