Many small business owners have realized the power of social media platforms like Twitter. It’s a great marketing tool, but there are some unwritten rules in the Twittersphere that every small business should know.

To make sure you don’t scare away your hard earned followers, we’ve put together a list of the top five Twitter offenders. If you fall into one of these categories, don’t worry, we’ll tell you how to fix it.

1. The self-enthusiast
This group loves, loves, loves to talk about themselves. You know the type, every tweet is oozing with self-important information like this.

“We’ve all seen them, the self-proclaimed ‘gurus’ who only tweet about their most recent book release, blog entry or speaking engagement,” says Hannah Meuser, social media strategist at marketing company Anvil Media Inc.

“It’s not a crime to use social media to help promote personal success, but no one wants to hear someone talk exclusively about themselves,” says Meuser.

Solution: Offer a variety of information on your Twitter feed. Share links to interesting, industry-specific articles, highlight other successful people in your field, and showcase events that your followers are interested in. Above all else, provide value to your followers.

2. The serial retweeter
If your Twitter strategy relies on the retweet button, you might want to rethink it, Meuser says. Retweets can certainly expose more people to information, but if you’re retweeting up a storm, your followers may say, “See ya.” People followed you to hear what you have to say, not just what you can regurgitate from other feeds.

In other words, people don’t want to see a feed like this with the words “retweeted” over and over again.

Solution: You can still retweet good content, but Meuser suggests adding your opinion to the tweet or adding a comment to further the conversation. Plus, add variety to your feed by sharing unique content of your own.

3. The direct message marketing (DM) spammer
These Twitter offenders send direct marketing messages to their followers. It can be considered a no-no. It can be the equivalent of junk mail in your Twitter inbox.

Solution: Just don’t do it. That’s not to say you can’t reach out to a specific follower, but make sure it’s with a personal message.

4. The auto tweeter
You’re busy, we get it. That’s why scheduling tweets is appealing and often necessary, but sometimes your need to work ahead can cause a Twitter faux pas.

Solution: If you do preschedule tweets, don’t just set it and forget it. Make sure you monitor what’s going on in the world to avoid tweeting something inappropriate.

5. The over tweeter
You want to be a steady presence in your followers’ feeds, but you don’t want to go overboard. Put simply, don’t tweet ten times a day about irrelevant stuff. For instance, the stream of tweets below is not valuable. Don’t waste your audience’s time, or they’ll unfollow you. 

Solution: Each tweet you send out should be relevant. What’s the best tweet frequency? There isn’t a hard and fast rule here. Each small business is different, but a good rule of thumb is three to five tweets a day.

Is there another kind of Twitter offender that we forgot? Feel free to add to our list in the comment section below.

Want more marketing tips and tactics? Sign up for the free VR Buzz.

© 2014 – 2018, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.