Maybe Twitter is the best thing that has happened to brands. But somewhere in there, a few Twitter pitfalls are ruining the experience of many users.
Sadly, many brands do not really understand the platform and consider Twitter to be just another marketing platform that they need to have presence on, resulting in irresponsible and bad communication with followers.
1. Self-Promotion
I agree that brands need to share their message and given 140 characters to play with brands have to use a lot of creativity. But if brands are always talking about themselves aka self-promoting and not giving any other perspective or engaging with followers, they are doing everything wrong.
2. Overuse of Hashtags
How many times have you see a message like, "#Love #pendant, #follow #ABC #brand. #jewellery?" Aargh!! Let me tell you, that's the worst way of making your message discoverable. It's very painful to the human eye to see all hashes out there and search for your message. Instead, innovate your message, and use no more than 2 hashtags in your tweet
3. Buying followers
Buying Twitter followers is a raging topic of discussion these days. We know many brands resort to this technique in order to convey the message that they are 'popular.' But what they forget is 10 tweets will not have 100,000 followers. Also tools like StatusPeople can also help identify the number of fake accounts (not sure about the results though). Regular users will quickly realize that you're masquerading and will refuse to engage with you. Sometimes even Twitter swoops down on such accounts and brands might see a sudden drop in the number of followers. Instead, engage with followers and build your fanbase organically.
4. Not Responding or deleting negative comments
One of the biggest Twitter pitfall is either not responding to follower and/or deleting negative comments. Either of these actions will obviously generate a negative opinion about the brand. The true essence of Twitter or any social platform is to be 'social' and engage with followers. Make sure you handle negative comments tactfully. And do not write anything derogatory about the follower.
After reading this, you should be able to avoid each of the above Twitter pitfalls and rock your brand on Twitter.