Ten Quick Ways to Lose Your Twitter Following

By Rodney Brooks, on July 2nd, 2009

It takes a lot of time, effort, and social marketing know-how to build up a large, high quality following on Twitter. If you’re not careful, however, all your social marketing efforts could go to waste.

Twitter for business novices who don’t understand the rules of the game risk annoying, and losing, their followers.

In this business television show, Twitter for business expert Mark Shaw shares the ten most common social marketing mistakes that Twitter users make – so that you can avoid making them yourself!

Shaw begins his social marketing tips and business development advice with a social marketing error that is very common on Twitter: continuously tweeting banal information, about what you just ate for lunch, or how you are walking down the street, or putting on your shoes.

It’s okay to mention a few of these things, but unless you are a big celebrity, your followers will not be interested in being updated on the minutiae of your everyday life!

Shaw’s next social marketing no-no is only ever tweeting links to other blogs and sites, without contributing your own original content. Remember that the reason you are on Twitter in the first place is to build relationships and share information about your business.

Similarly, you should avoid having a page of RSS feeds on your Twitter page. If your followers want to access RSS feeds, they can get them themselves very easily.

Once again, the object of your social marketing campaign is to share news about yourself and your products. If you only ever share links and RSS feeds, you might appear lazy or uninteresting, or both.

In the rest of the business television show, Shaw shares plenty of other social marketing tips on making the most of Twitter for your business. Other pieces of advice include not swearing on Twitter, not using caps, and not tweeting too often.