Alright, so I’ll come out and say it: I use to be totally annoying on Twitter. Maybe it wasn’t always my own Twitter account (gasp! a clients account), but in the Twitosphere I accounted for some of the things that annoy avid users. While some of my behavior was based on naiveté, others behavior is usually just out of pure laziness. Let’s look at some of the common annoyances, and you can figure out just how annoying you are to your followers.
I guess in some ways, auto DMs can serve a purpose but in general they’re a bad idea. Usually a standard, “Hello friend, thanks for following me”, message has no real impact on the intended recipient. Sending a direct message to a new follower that is customized and genuine will go a lot farther than those that are seemingly robotic and standard.
15 Annoyance PointsAuto Direct Messages
“Wow, this salad is awesome” may be exciting to some, but 9 times out of 10 your followers could care less about what you’re eating. Kill the mundane tweeting, and tweet with purpose. Maybe your followers would rather hear, “Wow, this gorgeous salad from The Vig Uptown Phoenix is the bomb.com, and only $10″ with a tweetpic of the salad. What’s in it for your followers? Knowing a great place to get an awesome lunch. Thinking about how your followers will react to your messages will help you cut down on redundancy.
25 Annoyance PointsMundane Tweets
You get follow Friday’d…wow, awesome…..but they don’t even follow you? What?! At the very least someone should follow you if they are going to recommend you to their followers. If not, then they’re just looking for some shameless love.
10 Annoyance Points#FF From People Who Aren’t Following You
It seems like weekly I’ll get a random @ reply from someone who 1) isn’t following me, 2) is trying to sell something, and 3) sends out automated @ replies. No, spammy person, I don’t care that you made $3,064 in 4 days on Twitter. This method of attempting to get traffic, help with branding, or making $3,064 in 4 days just doesn’t work. Try sending out genuine @ replies. Start tracking keywords of interest to you, your brand, or your clients brand. Listen first, follow second, and @ reply third.
10 Annoyance PointsRandom @ Replies
Seriously people, use URL shorteners. Why tweet if your whole URL takes up 134 characters, when it could take 20? Laziness? Maybe. Annoying? Yup.
10 Annoyance PointsLong URLs
You see a funny/interesting/helpful/groovy tweet, and go to click that RT button….only to find out, it’s more than 140 characters. I know….the character limit of 140 characters kinda sucks sometimes, but it’s not hard to figure out how many characters you should limit your tweets to in order to allow for RTs.
10 Annoyance PointsNot RT-able
Seriously? Is it really necessary to let all your friends know what you are doing in the privacy of the bathroom? While this falls under the “mundane tweets” category, it also deserves a category of its own. Simply put, nobody has any desire to know what you are up to in the bathroom, so you should absolutely refrain from posting such updates on Twitter.
10 Annoyance PointsOn The Toilet Tweets
So tally it up, what is your twitter annoyance level? Use the chart below to figure out your score, and let us know in the comments.
• 0-15 – Mildly Annoying
•20-40 – Might want to reevaluate your tweeting habits
•55-90 – Alright, time for a change! Stop being so annoying!What’s Your Score?
About the Author: Kaila is the Social Media Architect at Vertical Measures, a social media marketing and internet marketing services company based in Phoenix, AZ. Follower her here on Twitter, and she promises not to be too annoying.
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