Archive for October, 2009

Have you really looked at your list of Twitter followers lately? If you have, you probably know that feeling. You see someone on the list of those you’re following and you have no idea whatsoever why they made the cut.

Sometimes, you must cull your list. Not only will that help control the “noise” in your Twitter stream, it will also help in other ways.

First, it helps keep Twitter clean. Following bad accounts, dead accounts, spammers and bots only encourages aberrant behavior. Cut the bad guys loose and send a message.

Second, it provides a service to those who follow you. Your followers may look to the list of people upon whom you’re keeping tabs as a guide to whom they should follow. Following someone is sort of like endorsing them. If you’re making bad recommendations, it can’t help your standing.

Take some time to occasionally clean your Twitter house. You might have followed someone on a lark or because it looked like he or she would be a nice fit for your network. If they aren’t contributing, however, there’s no reason to prolong the “relationship”.

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Twitter can be an extremely powerful tool–if you use it the right way. If you approach it the wrong way, however, you can waste a lot of time with no visible return.

Here are few ways to lose on Twitter. These are common blunders that make the Twitter process a complete loss for participants.

Being too aggressive. If you hit the ground running at the full sprint with Twitter, you’re risking some trouble. For instance, those who suddenly add masses and masses of new people to the list of those they follow may be categorized as probable spammers or troublemakers. That can get an account closed.

Using Twitter as an afterthought. There are people who set up a tool that will announce their blog posts to Twitter. They combine that with an automatic message to new followers and they forget all about it. It’s not really helpful to have your Twitter account out there announcing new posts for the sake of traffic if you’re not an active participant. You become annoying and “fake” to most of your followers and you can damage your reputation more than you can help it.

Those are just two ways to be a Twitter loser. There are many more. The takeaway here is that it’s important to learn the right way to use Twitter if you want to make it part of your online endeavors.

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