So I’ve been doing the Twitter thing now for about a month and a half now. I’ve learned something important. You really, truly can alienate people with your Tweets. I may have done some of that myself, for which I apologize. My excuse is that I was new. I think I’m doing OK now. I’ve got great tweeps and a cool platform. I know the rules of the road.
But some don’t. Over the past 90 days, I’ve found myself besieged by “followers” who spew the same sales link and/or message over and over and over and over and over and over again. I have an important message for them:
Zzzzzzzzzzzz……
To be fair, in a few cases, a pitch would get my attention, and I’d want more info. So I’d DM the person. No answer. Time would pass. I’d do it again, thinking maybe their traffic was high and my first request was overlooked. No answer. So another pause and another DM. Same silence. Finally it dawned on me that communication wasn’t their goal– they were scattergunning flimflam. Result? No sale.
I’m not saying all senders of wow-look-you-too-can-make-a-million-see-my-website messages are hustlers. But there are many of them. Too many. Way too many.
I used The Twitcleaner to weed out the rogues and scoundrels. The report showed who was trying to sell me crap (The Twitcleaner’s terminology, not mine), who tweeted nothing but links, potential spammers, and those who rarely tweet. It also showed me that I was following a bunch of people who weren’t following me back.
You can have The Twitcleaner auto-remove followers based on criteria you select, or you can do it yourself. Just to be on the safe side (and because I’m crazy), I elected the manual method. It took a loooooong time to say “buh-bye” to my horde of invaders, but I did it. And this morning, I see I’ve lost followers. Boo hoo. Do I need to be followed by a plethora of sales-pitch snarling robots or shills? Do you?
Life is too short to read garbage, even if it’s only 140 characters long. And none of us needs to be mindless pitch machines. Believe me, there’s so much noise on Twitter, people will turn you off if all you do is babble. It only takes a click to unfollow.
If you want to do this tweeting thing right, read Joel Comm’s Twitter Power. He tells you how to get the most out of this ever-mutating medium and how to build relationships in the process. Kudos to him for his common-sense approach to survival and prosperity on the new frontier. You can follow him on Twitter – he’s @joelcomm.
Also visit www.thetwitcleaner.com when you’re ready to give the riff raff the old heave-ho. They’re also on Twitter @thetwitcleaner.
