Just like with any new form of online communication, Twitter is under attack by spammers and overly-aggressive marketers. If you are someone who is using Twitter to network and market yourself and/or your business, you have to find a balance. If you don’t, people are just going to see you and your business in a negative light. So how do you find that elusive balance? A good place to start is to go by these three simple rules:
Rule 1: Never- EVER- join any kind of service or site which promises you will have more Twitter followers by sending out a Tweet about their service or site.
I (along with a lot of other people) have been receiving a lot of tweets lately from other Twitter users who inform me of a new way to add hundreds and even thousands of Twitter followers by clicking on the link in the tweets. I don’t know if these people realized it at the time but this is a great example of spam. So if you receive a tweet like the one I just described,
don’t follow their advice. And if you keep getting this kind of tweet from them- either block them or unfollow them.
Rule 2: Let people know if you are promoting a blog post of yours
Another form of spamming is to include a link in a tweet which leads to some kind of dubious sales page or to a site like StumbleUpon where they ask you to promote their blog post. The people doing this usually include some enticing text in the tweet to sell you on clicking the link even though you have no idea of where it leads.
This is why if you are sending out a tweet to promote a new post on your blog, let people know where it goes. I do this by adding the following: New @ Geek Entrepreneur: title of the post – url By doing this, people who get the tweet know the link will take them to my blog.
Rule 3: Don’t try to sell people your stuff on Twitter
I realize some people will disagree with me on this but I feel the last thing you should be trying to do on Twitter is sell your products or service. Twitter is a great way to network and build communication with other people and potential customers. If you are in the business of selling something,
then do it by engaging people enough so that they go to your web site or blog.
When this happens, then you have a potential buyer who has taken the first step in purchasing from you. If you go by these three rules, then you should have no trouble finding that balance I mentioned earlier. Twitter is a great way to market but only if you do it correctly!
