Stupid X-Twitter Misteaks [sic!]: It’s NOT a Link List
It’s 2023 and business people still make common social media management mistakes!
They often use X-Twitter the wrong way! Ouch! That really hurts! Why?
I’ve seen these stupid misteaks [sic!] ever since I started using the service back in 2008.
Yet people want to learn the hard way, by making the same mistakes again.
So what’s wrong about using X-Twitter for business? Nothing! It’s about the how!
Many marketers simply automate X-Twitter and post every single link of theirs.
Marketers Gonna Market
Although I don’t call myself a marketer – I’m an optimizer – most people assume I am one.
Thus all kinds of marketers follow me on X-Twitter.
I follow those marketers who – in one way or another – interact with me.
I follow mostly people who
- reply
- reshare
- react to my updates elsewhere
- share my blog posts
- cover my topics
Thus far it’s quite simple. Yet many people exhibit an antisocial behavior.
Lazy low level marketers also often automated link sharing and mass following accounts.
It’s such a stupid mistake! In contrast by 2023 some experts even stopped sharing links altogether!
Why? It’s simply because social media algorithms like the one of X-Twitter demote updates with links.
They use X threads instead and add a link in a follow up update. I tend to do that as well.
Yet many marketers stopped engaging long ago, they started dropping links.
More than that, marketers started to drop links all of the time. They are way too many!
It’s not just that. Some marketers simply self-promote 24/7!
How? They do it by mindlessly sharing links to their own content.
Cognitive Overload
How many links do you think I can check out on any given day? 3, 5, 10? That’s already optimistic.
How many of those articles you tweet I can read and recommend? Very few of the hundreds per hour.
What’s wrong with links and resharing them?
Well, links in general are fine but on X-Twitter they
- interrupt the flow and the conversation
- take time to scan, read, share on social media
- make you exit when you follow a link in an article
In case you follow me you probably noticed a few things:
- I share only a few links per day or rather week by now, never more than 3 to 5 at once.
- There is a balance between my own updates, @replies and reshares, something like 50/30/20 or 60/30/10 &
- When I share my own links I choose the best ones. I don’t promote my own articles all the time
You need to
- become choosy with links
- lead a conversation
- avoid cognitive overload
As a marketer you should be keen on
- gaining trust
- relative popularity
- follower loyalty
Instead many marketers simply flood and lead to cognitive overload of their followers in case they have any real audience at all.
How to Gain Trust on X-Twitter and Beyond
You gain trust on X-Twitter and beyond by posting the right links, quality not quantity.
You become relatively popular, not the useless “million followers” kind of popular. How exactly?
You become popular among your preferred audience by being on topic and adding tweets regularly in a digestible number (more like dozens than hundreds).
Your followers develop loyalty when they get to know you.
You can achieve relative popularity by talking with the people who follow you, by
- replying
- following up
- getting involved
- connecting
- helping people
SEO 2 on X-Twitter is about follower loyalty not sheer numbers.
Remember that X-Twitter is not a link list.
As a marketer in the SEO 2 sense you don’t need a dumb mass of followers!
Such “followers” barely scan your updates and are rarely acting!
You need a small group of die hard supporters.
Contact me to learn how to get their attention!
Yeah, sure, but did you notice the screenshot above? It’s just a random one I did of my Twitter page.
You get flooded.
Also I can read Smashing Magazine, Noupe etc. by myself. I don’t need to be force fed. In case you discover something I probably won’t find myself send me the link, but refrain from flooding me with the usual suspects. I don’t subscribe to Smashing Magazine for a reason inspite of liking it.
I tweeted about this already, Tad, but I think it deserves an explanation in more than 140 chars.
Twitter may not be a link list, but the very spirit of Twitter is how many different ways you can use it. I’m not too fond of dropping *only* links, but I have got used to frequent links. I discover a lot of useful, sensible posts that deserve attention (and not the dumb, for-a-no-job-teenager type of posts that show up on Digg).
I’m not sure about other niches, but for designers, bloggers and tech enthusiasts, the above is perfectly valid – saying from experience.
Also, no. of Twitter users you follow will have an impact – I follow ~50 as of now and am perfectly happy with it. It is impossible to follow everyone who follows me AND give them the attention they deserve, any way.
Well, there are many ways to use twitter. And this is just one of those ways. I just usually do not follow people that posts links constantly. It really does get quite annoying. I like to have people twitter in a variety of ways.
Did you write this Tad? It shows up in James in my RSS reader
Great post, I think you hit the nail on the head with the amount of people that are now dropping links. I like to follow people who follow me back so use TweetDeck so I can have the more ‘important’ people that I follow in their own stream.
Cheers,
Glen
I do all of Tad’s writing Glen :) (kidding). As we discussed on Twitter, I’m completely with you on this one Tad. I largely ignore links on Twitter based on sheer volume. How on earth am I meant to digest 8 links a minute?
Of course, the problem is everyone is just trying to win favour. You RT me and I’ll RT you. Completely understandable tactic and somewhat tempting to employ given the weight of traffic Twitter can drive. Problem is that when everyone employs that tactic we end up with a very, very noisy environment.
I am totally agree on this point, twitter is a online communication/sharing tool but not spamming tool.
Well, I’ll pipe up and offer a different perspective: The *most* useful tweets I get are the links. I love the fact that people I trust and respect have found stuff that I haven’t found, and are alerting me to it. I can quickly skim the links, knowing they have already been filtered for quality, and then bookmark those I’m going to follow up later.
Sure, I agree with your comments about being choosy, building trust, leading conversations, etc. And nobody likes spam and irrelevant information overload. But that’s true of all tweets, not just links.
I would much rather follow, say, Guy Kawasaki, who tweets a *lot* of links every day, than somebody else who tweet the same number of inane comments.
So don’t blame the links. The problem is not with links per se, it’s with tweeters who have a low signal-to-noise ratio. And Twitter has a simple solution for that: Unfollow.
I like that I get exposed to things via twitter that I might have missed otherwise: I recently wrote on my blog about a bunch of great designers I heard about (and now follow) via twitter.
However, the constant stream of links can get a bit much, and I will unfollow anyone who is overdoing it. I also find that at certain times of day my own efforts to start a conversation or ask a question can get lost in the noise.
The point about Smashing Magazine/Noupe etc is a good one. Their readership is huge. It’s a good strategy to tweet only the things that you genuinely think others may not have seen.
Too many people spam these kind of things. They may have positive results initially, but in the long term they are simply counter productive.
I know what you mean. I think people are getting carried away by just constantly posting links and not actually talking anyone. I always thought Twitter was supposed to be where you converse with other people.
Thank you! The links do break up the flow. A few are all right, but some people do nothing but tweet links.
Twitter is great. But when you have 2000+ friends it’s hard to navigate.
If that is what Twitter has becomed already I am glad I never falled into it. Still hanging out on good ol facebook.
My experience of twitter was not good. I still ask me sometimes, how people generate leads from there!
Thanks,
Richard
So what did you expect? Twitter is just another way to spam links.
If I want to communicate I take the phone, send an e-mail or use msn or something. If I want to tell the world I’m going to the toilet I use twitter…
It has been a recent concern, spam on twitter. I guess we only have to be responsible twitter users Blocking unwanted followers but it is just cumbersome.
Yeah! This is a quick guide to think not to scam and just tweet engaging good friendly relationship amongst others. Stay engaged with relevant topic and just interact.