• Home
• Follow me on Twitter
• Jobs
• About Holistic Search
• TSMR List
• Contact Us

Getting started on Twitter – Twitter Turnoffs

Twitter has been one of the tools I have been most into during 2008, something which has given me the opportunity to interact with some people I have only had a fleeting chance to meet during speaking engagements, industry events or attendance of conferences. This has included the likes of Kevin Ryan, Dave Naylor and various people from agencies such as Latitude  and BigMouthmedia.

For people not familiar with Twitter, Twitter is a microblogging service which allows a maximum of 140 characters, something which allows for a service which in my opinion ends up midway between an instant messsenger and a blog.

There are a number of reasons however I may choose or not choose to connect with someone on Twitter – for example:

• No Introduction – Always nice to know a little about you before I choose to follow (or not as the case may be)
• No link to website – If your description doesn’t suffice, then a link is always good, so I can find out more about you.
• What you say – Probably one of the more important factors here. There are an awful lot of people who have over 18000 comments. No offence you either have
  1) Too much time
  2) Write a lot of rubbish. I am one of those that would rather have 500 interesting posts than 18000 telling me that you are in Puerto Banus or the like
  3) Swearing and the like. On personal level I am not one of those that wants to read a load of cussing when looking at Twitter. That combined with 2 is a definite nono.
• Kan jy Engels praat – In english – do you speak English. Unless your Dutch or Afrikaans there is not a good chance of me understanding you so in practical terms there is little or no point me following you.
• Have you written anything. I often receive a number of ‘follows’ from people with no comments. What is the point of me following you – if you don’t say anything?
• Are you a brand – Not a keen follower of brands unless I really like you (@starbucks for example)
• Frequency of tweets – One tweet every four months is not that interesting – unless its worth waiting for (and lets face it 140 characters really is difficult to write something knockout in – although I will stop short of impossible)
• Self Promotion – Shameless self promotion is a definite turn-off. People don’t use twitter for pure business purposes (if you want that LinkedIn or Ecademy is great for you. I tend to find people like to get to know you more ‘personally’ rather than your corporate persona.
• Are you in an industry I am interested in. For obvious reasons, SEO, Paid Search and other online marketing professionals are always an easy win – although Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and MCHammer (Remember him) have somehow made their way onto the list

If you are on Twitter, feel free to drop us a line – twitter.com/peteyoung, if you aren’t give it a try (and forget about your social life – at least without Twitter)

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.