The 10 Most Common Mistakes on Twitter

As twitter continues to gain popularity and more and more people sign up, new members can make a lot of mistakes that can make it harder for them to get and keep followers. Here are ten of the most common mistakes.

1. An incomplete profile

People may stumble across your twitter page and start following you, but they won't be very likely to do that unless your profile says something about who you are and what you tweet about. Your profile page can include a picture, your name, your location, your website, and a bio. You can also add your own background image. A bio is the most important part of getting people interested in following you. If you don't have a website of your own, put a link to a website that you like and visit frequently.

2. Tweeting too much

Most users who tweet too much are either new to using twitter or got a little carried away with using a system that automates their tweets. Interacting with other tweeps can help you gain followers, but you don't need to start tweeting every few seconds. An automated system for tweets has its benefits, but don't overuse it. For one thing, your tweets will be very impersonal if every tweet is automated. And too many automated tweets can cause people to lose interest in whatever it is you're promoting or trying to tell people about.

3. Constantly focusing on followers

Even people who have been using twitter for a while can be anxious to gain more followers. Gaining followers is good, but constantly focusing only on that aspect of using twitter is not. It will make you seem selfish to the people who are already following you. People won't be very interested in you if all you do is focus on the number above the word "followers".

4. Using people

This fourth mistake could also be listed as "Don't spam people". If you have something to sell that's fine, but people will be annoyed and start unfollowing you if they think you're only interested in using them to get more followers. If you want to get and keep followers you have to show some interest in them other than constantly advertising to them.

5. Not following enough people

You don't have to follow back everyone who follows you, but you should follow back most of them. Most of the people who follow you will probably expect you to start following them back. It will look like you're just blowing people off if you never follow back any new followers, unless you have a celebrity account.

6. Overusing the hashtag

The hashtag is a bit part of the twitter universe. Whensomeone clicks on a word in your tweet that has a hashtag in front of it they can see all tweets mentioning the same thing. They can do the same thing by using the search box, but hashtags make it easier to find people to follow on twitter. Gaining followers is really the main reason for using hashtags, though people also use them when they want something to become a trending topic. Overusing hashtag could lead to your followers reporting you for spam and blocking you.

7. Not using lists

Once you start following a lot of people on twitter your time line will constantly be full and it will be very difficult to keep track of the tweets you actually had some interest in. Adding people to lists can make using twitter much simpler.

8. Not responding to people

This is just part of taking care of your followers. If someone is too demanding you can unfollow or block them, but expecting a response from you is not all that outrageous. If someone sends you a message or a tweet respond as quickly as you can.

9. Settling disputes with tweets instead of DMs

You will occasionally have to deal with people who will just put you down, try to pick a fight with you, or people who are just being obnoxious. Sometimes you have to just ignore that as much as possible, but if you do have something to say to them send them a DM instead of using tweets that everyone can see in their time line. Try to settle the dispute privately.

10. Read before you retweet

This one may seem obvious, but a lot of people don't seem to read an important part of the tweet they just retweeted-the link. If you don't want people thinking that you endorse it or support it, then read it before you retweet it.