Quit the damn spam! Why automating tweets can hurt your business

Twitter brings with it a wealth of opportunities for businesses to connect with their customers and potential customers, generate sales leads, network, build relationships, create awareness and ultimately drive sales. If used correctly, Twitter can be one of the most valuable additions to your business marketing armoury. Use it wrong though, and you could have the reverse effect. You can alienate the very people you want to woo, lose credibility, gain enemies rather than brand advocates, and those potential customers could be lost as prospects forever, all in 140 characters.

There’s a host of Twitter tips and advice we could cover, some of which you can find in this previous list of Twitter dos and don’ts, but this time I want to focus on just one thing. My greatest pet hate about Twitter. It’s automated, spammy tweets.

For the record, I’m not necessarily opposed to using tools to automate some of your social media updates. It can be a useful time saving method of updating your accounts when used well. My problem is quite simple. I don’t want to receive DMs and tweets which are clearly only coming my way based on the fact that I’ve followed you, or I’ve tweeted using a particular keyword. Tweets and messages that are not tailored to me, that show me you haven’t even looked at my profile or know anything about me or my business. Tweets that are just spam. And I’d bet my house that your potential customers don’t either.

“Here’s Johnny!” – 16 Movie quotes to inspire your social media marketing

“To be or not to be..” – classic one liners are nothing new – they’ve been around for as long as stories could be told, and the most memorable have become part of our every day language. What makes them memorable is that they’re draped in emotion – sorrow, pain, joy, laughter, inspiration, shock, horror, fear, or just plain nostalgia. The classics may last forever.

Who doesn’t love a good one liner? Hollywood in all its story telling grandeur has become the place to conjure up those classic moments of cinema that will be remembered and repeated for years to come. We’ve had some epic deliveries from true Hollywood legends over the years. Script writers’ hearts must dance with glee when they realise they’ve come up with a magic bullet which will live on far beyond the box office takings.

I don’t claim to be a movie buff by any stretch, but a modest love of films mixed with a passion for using social media in the right way for business has led me to come up with a few ‘lessons to be learned’ from some of Hollywood’s great one liners. And if the lessons can help along the way, even better! Enjoy…

1. “Go the distance” – Field of Dreams

One of my favourite movies!

The fact is, social media is not a fad. It’s not something that will work overnight either. If you expect to get a return on social media for your business, you’ve got to commit the time and energy. As Kevin Costner sat in that Iowa ballpark with the wonderful James Earl Jones, he realised there was more to this than first appeared. As is the same with social media – you mustn’t quit after a week when you don’t see the results. Perseverance is essential – keep plugging away and you’ll eventually crack the code. Don’t sell the farm prematurely – you may never know what you’ll be missing..this is for the long haul!

Is social media ruining your career? No – you’re doing that all by yourself!

Employers use social media to have a look at the public profiles of employees and potential employees. Fact. It’s not a new discovery. And yet, it appears it is actually a stunning revelation to so many. Why? With so many businesses, brands and professionals on social media, why would it come as such a surprise that it is used as a research tool to vet potential employees?

It’s used as a research tool to find prospective employees, so why not to find out more about them? In fact, 69% of recruiters have already rejected candidates based on the content found on their social networking profiles.

I recently watched a Twitter exchange on this very subject with amazement. The discussion involved switched on individuals, established tweeters, social media savvy people…or so I thought.

One tweeter simply asked the question “How do you feel about your employer looking at your social media activities?” It’s a fair enough question – bound to be mixed feelings about it I suspected. The responses quite simply stunned me.

Some questioned whether this actually happened – in reality? – surely not! – was it real?! Their disbelief was palpable – as was mine at their sheer naivety.

Others were appalled at the thought. They felt it inappropriate, intrusive, a downright infringement on their rights in some cases.

Unbelievable! We live in a digital era. The ubiquitous nature of social media has seen it influence every area of our lives. If you have public social media profiles, this makes everything you publish there, well…public! It’s fair game. This is not an invasion of privacy or an infringement on your rights – you’ve chosen what you’ve published and you’ve selected your privacy settings.