Tweets that Make You Look Like a Spammer
Twitter spammers. They’re annoying, even if the tweets make us laugh sometimes because they are so darn ridiculous. I mean, did someone really post “bad things” about me online? Did they really LOL because they saw me in that video? [insert fishy link here]
Yep, spammers are a part of Twitter. There’s no doubt about it. But you’ll probably seen regular, real, actual people on Twitter who sometimes act like a spammer. Sometimes they just don’t know better and other times they just don’t care. But you can avoid giving out spammy vibes just by avoiding these top spammy-like tweets:
Tweeting Way Too Many Motivational Quotes
I’m a sucker for a good quote. Funny, inspiring, snarky, thought-provoking. Whatever the type of quote, they are bite-sized nuggets of goodness when used in moderation.
However, when you start tweeting out quotes all day long, you start to look like a spammer. Cause that’s what those make-money-online, spammers do. Especially the quotes that kind of make you say “duh.” Case in point:
“True passion is infectious!”
How to Avoid It: Everything in moderation, padawan. Quotes can be actually motivation if you aren’t stuffing everyone’s Twitter feed with them. Just not too much. Einstein, Mark Twain and Anonymous won’t mind.
Excessive Use of Hashtags
Hashtags are awesome little things. Most of the time. You can find groups of people tweeting about a common interest, ask questions about a topic to reach more than your followers and stay on top of relevant topics that go beyond just seeing tweets from your followers.
Yes, hashtags are great… until you see a real gem of a tweet like this:
#Read our latest #article and understand why #QualityVsQuantity is important to improve your #EmailDeliverability
Is there a Twitter party going on at #QualityVsQuantity we should know about? Le sigh.
How to Avoid It: Seriously though, loading up a tweet with hashtags definitely makes you smell like a spammer. Instead, limit them to the most relevant ones to the content of your tweet. Or tweet something later on with another hashtag (as long as it’s relevant).
Auto Direct Messaging Like You’re Being Friendly
I’ll never forget following this one “successful” chick. I got a direct message a short time later that said something like:
“I just love your tweets, Melissa. You rock! Thanks for following me!”
For a 1,000th of a second, I thought “ooh she’s really been reading my tweets! I rock!” But that 1,000th of a second passed. She had oodles of followers so I silently called foul. I unfollowed her and then followed her AGAIN. You see where this was going.
“I just love your tweets, Melissa. You rock! Thanks for following me!”
Ugh.
How to Avoid It: Let’s just get this straight. You should never ever ever do automatic direct messages on Twitter. I’ve written about it when talking about 8 reasons no one follows you on Twitter and I even dedicated an entire post to the evil of auto DMs. Just stay far, far way, mmmkay?
Excessively Posting in Trending Topics to Get Attention
While this one sounds similar to the one about overusing hashtags, it’s a bit different. Spammers love to take advantage of popular topics and start inserting their spammy tweets into the trending topic stream. In fact, if you’re the one who started the trending topic (like a conference hashtag, Twitter party hashtag, meme), you’ll know you’ve arrived at awesomeness when the spammers come out to play.
While there’s nothing wrong with jumping into popular conversations with true interaction and relevance, you’ll definitely look like a spammer doing this:
@mackcollier Bloggers can handwrite one or all of their posts for
#ThinkinInk Week (& beyond) & submit here: http://LINK#blogchat
This company actually spammed the #blogchat chat more than once with the same message. Not the way to win friends, people.
How to Avoid It: If you’re going to jump into popular trending topics, stick to the trending topic and interact! It’s really that simple.
Copying and Pasting the Same @ Replies to People
Have you ever received an @ reply out of the blue where someone tells you about their new blog post, service or product? It feels a little too canned so you look at their profile and sure enough, they’ve been going through and pasting the same tweet over and over again to various people.
Their Twitter history looks like this:
@MelACulbertson Thought this new post I wrote about hamsters might be helpful to you. http://www.link.com.
@adventuroo Thought this new post I wrote about hamsters might be helpful to you. http://www.link.com.
@melculbertson Thought this new post I wrote about hamsters might be helpful to you. http://www.link.com.
The worst part about this one is not only is it crappy etiquette, it’s also against Twitter’s Terms of Use. See? Even THEY consider it spam.
How to Avoid It: Don’t do it. It’s like knocking door to door and asking people to read your blog post. Just tweet it out to your followers and save the @ replies for actual, bonafide conversations. I’ve nicely told people this was against Twitter’s TOS and gotten great “oh I didn’t know that!” responses that led to me picking up a friendly, new follower who just needed a bit of guidance.
Let’s Stay Away from Spam
Tweets like the ones above don’t help you build a strong presence, drive interaction or do anything worthwhile. So let’s stick to genuine interaction, promoting ourselves in moderation and sharing posts/articles/anything we think our followers would like. Now that’s the way to do it, spam-free.
