How Not to Look Like an Idiot on Twitter

Well do you? The sad fact of the matter is that plenty of businesses do act like idiots on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and all the other social media platforms. But how do you know if you look like an idiot? In this article, I’m going to identify four of the most obvious things that make you look like an idiot on Twitter. Why? So you can avoid them and concentrate on just being awesome, of course.

1 Don’t ‘We’ All Over Us

Twitter is full of people claiming that they’re amazing. “We are the best at this thing”, “We are the world leaders in that thing”. Stop talking about yourself all the time. You’re less interesting to us than you think and it makes you look like an idiot. If most of your tweets are variations on “I just did this amazing thing, look at me!” you’re being an idiot on Twitter. If you have actually done something truly amazing, we’ll excuse you, but it has to be exceptional. Trust me, that rarely happens. Spend at least 80% of your time tweeting about us or something that interests us. Something other than you.

2 Don’t be Greedy

Just because Twitter allows us 280 characters, it doesn’t mean you have to use them all.  This an old mistake but I still see it being made every day. The most effective tweets are short, precisely worded and easy to share. I recall reading some research (I don’t remember the source at this moment) which showed that tweets of less than 100 characters are seven times more likely to be retweeted. For business social media users, this is even more important than social users. If your clients think you need to write an essay every time you mention your brand, they are hardly likely to want to work with you. Be concise without losing your meaning. It’s a skill worth learning.

3 Lose the default avatar

If your Twitter account is over 24 hours old, you have no excuse for having a blank head and shoulders as your profile picture. It makes you look lazy or unprofessional. Customise your Twitter avatar as soon as you can, preferably with a human face – who does business with a logo? It’s okay to include your logo in the background, but put your face in the foreground. There’s a pretty tired old phrase that we hear all the time but the reason it’s tired is that it’s a basic truth: People buy from people.

4 Your Bio Is Not as Funny as You Think

The same goes for your bio. If you have no description on your profile, don’t be surprised if you don’t get many followers either. Having a short, punchy bio that intrigues and attracts potential clients should be the aim of any business in Twitter. Oh and don’t try to be a smart-alec on it either; you’re not as funny as you think.

The Next Step

If you don’t want to look like an idiot on Twitter, you’d better get your act together. There are already too many idiots around. We may be short of a lot things online, but idiots are not one of them. Read this article, learn from it and share it with someone who needs it. There are plenty of people willing to be an idiot on Twitter, maybe together we can eliminate a few.

What do you think?

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