April 2010

8 Twitter Don’ts

in Twitter

When you use Twitter, please DON’T:

1. Create an account that doesn’t tweet except for asking people to follow you:

How Not to Twitter 2 500

 

2. Create an account that doesn’t tweet except for a single tweet with your website URL:

How Not to Twitter 3 500

 

3. Create a Twitter account with unreadable light font on light background that means no one can read your Twitter bio:

How Not to Twitter 4 500

 

4. Beg us in your bio to buy from you becuase it’s your dream, then proceed to post tweets that tell us about your sales:

How Not to Twitter 5 500

 

5. Use a cluttered, annoying Twitter background:

How Not to Twitter 6 500

 

6. Invite people to increase their Twitter followers. This empty numbers game of Twitter followers is one of the stupidest things I have ever come across:

How Not to Twitter 7 500

 

7. Use your dog’s or your child’s photo as your profile picture:

How Not to Twitter 9 500

 

8. Create an account that has no tweets whatsoever:

How Not to Twitter 10 500

 

Thank you.

Twitter Reduces Spam to 1% of Tweets – NOT ENOUGH

in Twitter

<rant>

Twitter has recently boasted on its blog that they have managed to seriously reduce Twitter spam and that spam now account for just 1% of all tweets.

While the supportive folks on Mashable were quick to join Twitter’s little celebration, pointing out that this figure is impressive since 90% of email is spam, I find it a little misleading. Perhaps 90% of email is spam, but – at least when I use Gmail – none of it reaches my Inbox. However, when I use Twitter, I still deal with spammers daily.

I’m happy that Twitter realizes how important it is to improve the situation when it comes to spam, and I’m truly glad things are improving, but 1% is still too much. I want none of this to reach me in any way, whether in direct messages, direct tweets or aggressive following and unfollowing. All of these behaviors are a huge time suck, and I’m simply too busy to deal with that.

Now, it’s true that as someone who tweets for a living, I probably come across more spam than the average Twitter user, becuase I manage several Twitter accounts for several companies. But as I said, I still have to deal with Twitter spam daily – several times each day in fact for each account that I manage – and this, to me, is unacceptable.

</rant>

Should Google Be Afraid of Social Media?

I don’t think it should.

Not everyone would agree – there have been so many articles and blog posts and comments lately saying that people now spend more time on social media sites than they do on search and news sites (in fact, Facebook recently surpassed Google in US traffic); that the recent slew of Google developments and changes, including adding social results to search results; adding a “past hour” filter to search results; adding social search; and of course Google Buzz – are all a result of Google’s frantic attempt to retain market share in the face of fierce competition from social media sites.

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Despite Fighting Spam and Scam, Twitter Scams Still Abound

I came across this tweet and thought to myself that this is exactly the type of work-from-home scams that people need to beware of. Twitter is still filled with people who tweet this type of stuff. Despite all the efforts to clean Twitter out of spam and scams, it’s still pretty much “user beware” when [...]

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Personally, I Wouldn’t Tweet That

Especially not on what seems to be a professional account. Unless his account has been hacked, I can’t really think of a single reason why tweeting this would be a good idea (click on the image to see the original tweet):

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Social Media ROI: Real Life Examples

Everyone likes to say how difficult it is to measure social media ROI, how social media is about conversations and long-term relationship building and so cannot be measured and quantified, especially since it takes so long to build social media relationships (just as it takes a long time to build trust in real life). It’s [...]

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