March 30, 2015: There are mortal sins, grave sins, venial sins, and Twitter sins. Here are ten lamentable ones that we’re tired of seeing:
Top 10 Twitter Sins
1. Dramatic/Stupid Self-Titles: This one is for all of you “gurus,” “experts,” “influencers,” and <fill in the blank>“ninjas”: STOP. If I see one more made-up, ridiculous title, I’m going to scream along with every other Millennial online. Using one of these “buzzy” titles means only one thing to me: you probably know nothing about the network/business/platform, etc. that you’re preaching about. A true expert does not need to say it, and a “ninja” makes me nervous about the state of his/her mental health.
Gif from giphy.com
2. Distorted Images: If your image is blurry/ too small/ has unreadable text, you look clueless. The perfect size for a twitter image is 1024 x 512. Canva is a free tool you can use that even has pre-sized layouts for a ton of networks! Don’t be lazy.
3. Too Many Hashtags: Two or three hashtags are fine, but any more than that is really pushing it. Pick the most relevant tags, and try to work them into your message instead of piling them all on the end.
Gif from giphy.com.
4. Canned Direct Messages: Does this tactic fool anyone? I understand your desire to lead masses of Twitterati to your site/blog, but trust those that follow you to do this on their own. The use of canned direct messages invariably makes you seem less personal than you likely are.
5. Too Much Salesy Self Promotion: Here at Didit, we live by the 80/20 rule. That rule boils down to “80% resourceful content and 20% of your own pitch.” Please stop constantly tweeting about your new eBook!
Gif from giphy.com.
6. Ugly Banners: This Twitter sin ties in with the above pet peeve. Don’t make a hideous self-promoting Twitter banner about your new book. Have a personal header, maybe with name/contact info… but please lose the tacky “guru” garbage. I’d rather see a Tweet about your pet dog or something.
7. Irrelevant Content: Please don’t trick me into clicking a link that isn’t what you say it is. You will get a swift unfollow.
Gif from giphy.com.
8. Hopping on “Trending Tags” without Context: Hopefully, we’ve all learned from the mistakes of others with this one. Hashtag research is immensely important! It’s definitely not worth the apologies and headaches for PR when you tweet inappropriately.
9. Ugly Links: I’ll never understand the people that tweet long trailing off links when sites like bit.ly exist. It’s free, it allows you to track tweets, and it looks way better than your million-character link. Get it together!
Gif from giphy.com.
10. Continuation Tweets: I might upset some people for this one, but continuation tweets are so annoying. Write how you feel on your blog and share a link. Don’t make me (1/2)
Read your thoughts backwards and chopped up into 140 character pieces. Thanks. (2/2)
Gif from giphy.com.
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