My Big Twitter Blunder

TweetBuild my ego.

That was (apparently) the first goal I set out to achieve when I began using Twitter.  I suppose I wanted to feel important, powerful —- popular.

I went for numbers.  And I got them.

When I began using Twitter, I used some tactics that allowed me to build a lot of followers very quickly.  I can remember one day my Outlook didn’t stop dinging for more than a minute with a new “So and So You Have Never Met And Whom Doesn’t Care About You And Whom You Don’t Care About is now following you on Twitter” email.

A Big Mess

To make things worse, I enabled a setting in one of my tools that automatically followed back anyone that followed me.

The “You have a New Follower” emails were followed by the inevitable spammy DM message telling me how I could become rich overnight or, better yet, how I could gain even more followers whom didn’t care about me and whom I didn’t care about.

My Twitter stream quickly became an endless parade of less than worthless messages.

I promptly stopped tweeting.

Well, I should say that I promptly stopped tweeting as a human and let sites like Twitterfeed automatically publish other people’s blog posts along with my own via RSS.

Although my following continued to grow during this time, I saw absolutely no benefit to my business.

Saved By Twitter Lists

I knew I had made a mistake but the prospect of “unfollowing” hundreds of people using the clunky Twitter interface (hint, hint to Twitter) made me ill.

Enter Twitter Lists.

Twitter lists allowed me to segment those that I was following and I immediately set to work creating my first and only Twitter list.  It is called “Trusted.”

My “trusted” list is a group of people that I know are real human beings with real businesses.  They are not scam artists or hucksters.

I was saved.  I could now filter out all of the “untrusted” and only see the “trusted” tweets.  By the way, don’t feel bad if you are not in my trusted list on Twitter yet, I am still working on it.

Suddenly I could see again.  The tweets that I was reading in my “trusted” list had merit.  They were actually valuable.  I turned off all of my automated tweeting and started ACTUALLY engaging with a few of these people.

I made friends.  I networked. I retweeted.  I made jokes. I shared.  I borrowed.

I used Twitter for what it is truly good for.  Communicating.

I now find Twitter to be an irreplaceable tool for my business.  It keeps me connected with a group of people that I would otherwise  never known existed.  I have begun to receive referrals from some of these connections.  And I have referred business myself.

It has been absolutely remarkable.

What about you?  Have you made some of these same mistakes using Twitter?  Are you finding Twitter to be a useful tool for your business?

Tagged as: twitter, twitter lists, twitterfeed