5 Ways NOT to Use Twitter for Freelancers
Credit: Steve Garfield on Flickr
Twitter is a great social media resource for any business, freelancing included. It can help you brand yourself, build a network of like-minded users, promote your work, and share news about your business. As the social media manager for three print publications, I spend a fair amount of time on Twitter each day. And I’ve learned a thing or two about Twitter etiquette.
Twitter offers you 140 characters to share information, but there’s much more to it. No matter if you are new to the Twittersphere or you already have a Twitter handle, here are five things that can kill you on Twitter.
A Bad Profile Photo
Your profile photo on Twitter has got to be simple—there is no room for anything complicated. The best idea is to use your logo. If you want to use a photo of yourself, make sure it’s professional. Using a photo of you passed out at someone’s bachelor party is NOT a good idea.
I would also discourage changing your profile pic too often. You want people to recognize you and your brand. Keeping your Twitter profile picture simple and stable is the best way to go.
Sharing too Much Personal Information
It’s OK to post personal information on Twitter; we’re not robots. But if you are building a brand for your freelance business, be careful what you divulge and complain about—you don’t want to alienate potential clients and no one likes to listen to a Debbie Downer.
Some people have a separate professional and a personal Twitter account, which are used to stay in touch with two very different audiences. Your friends might find it funny that your 2-year-old just puked into your favorite pair of loafers or care about how angry it makes you that your husband doesn’t help with the laundry, but your business contacts are not going to care. As a freelancer, you want people to care about what you say and follow you on Twitter for the right reasons.
Following Everyone
Following 1,000 people on Twitter and having just 50 followers of your own doesn’t look great. In fact, it looks desperate. The people I follow for the wedding magazine I work for are chosen deliberately. I follow people in the wedding industry like photographers, event planners, florists, bakers, and reception venues. And since the wedding magazine has a specific geographical target, I try to follow the best vendors and industry experts in that area. It doesn’t make sense for me to follow hospitals, bio tech companies, or a 45-year-old married guy who drives a tractor trailer for a living—that’s not my target audience.
I also follow companies who advertise in the wedding magazine in the hopes that they follow me back. I also try to follow people our sales team targets as potential advertisers. You never know what you are going to learn about potential clients on Twitter. It’s good to show them you’re interested and engaging.
Ignoring Your Competitors
You know the saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”? It applies to the world wide web, too. If you are not following your competitors you are shooting yourself in the foot. Instead of snubbing them, follow them! It’s a great way to keep tabs on what other people are doing in your industry and open doors for networking opportunities.
Installing the Twitter Application on Facebook
Facebook and Twitter are different beasts. For marketing purposes, your Facebook status update should be updated a few times a day, max. Tweets should be used more frequently. If you tie them together you run the risk of annoying your Facebook followers with too much information; you don’t want to alienate your followers. Your aunt and your college friends aren’t going to want to be inundated with your business Tweets on their Facebook page.
Think about why you use Twitter and what you want to accomplish before tweeting. Sometimes what you don’t tweet is just as important as what you do.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Steve Garfield.
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That was short sweet and to the point. I particularly like how you pointed out that Facebook and Twitter serve different purposes in your promotion agenda. You have to always consider the medium you are using when you want to communicate anything. So many people ignore that under the pretext of being “consistent”.
Great piece! The last point was spot on. So many people just connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts just to prove how active they are, but all it does is it annoys your Facebook friends.
There’s so much (un)-awareness about using social media the right way.
Very nice post – and easy to share with folks that just don’t get it.
Thanks for the info about updating your profile pic – it’s good advice that many people don’t think about.
You inspired me to write a post about 5 ways that I use twitter in my freelance life: http://brandscaping.ca/2011/07/finding-twitter-%E2%80%93-5-tips-for-freelancers/
Our experience setting up Twitter accounts for clients is that using a personal name and photo will get you many more followers than using a logo.
Facebook Pages don’t seem to matter but for Twitter definitely use a head shot. Just our experience.
I’d add one caveat on your last point. While I agree that it’s a bad idea to tie your freelancing Twitter feed to your personal Facebook, I personally have found it great to tie it to your Facebook Fan Page.
I did, however, stop my tweets from updating my Facebook Fan Page because I want to be able to give little “off the cuff” Tweets but not have my Fan Page littered with these comments. But having my Facebook Fan Page sure saves me time.
Good points — I like to vary my business facebook status and my business tweets so I’m not sharing everything twice. Some news is better shared on twitter rather than facebook…and vice versa.
There’s a few more I would want to add based on what I’ve seen over the years.
- Use hashtags sparingly
Many businesses tend to hash completely random verbs or nouns. Understand that hashtags are great ways to tie tweets to ongoing events like a pop festival or weather calamity, but not to randomly highlight words.
Just think from a trend perspective and consider whether or not the tagged word will be looked up by your target audience, and if your tweet contributes to that.
- Make your timeline worth following
A mistake I commonly see is businesses spouting out self-centered tweets rather than interesting thoughts and findings. If you want exposure, you need to feed and cater to your audience. Did you read up on interesting usability insights? Found a surprising fact about human psychology? Share it! Doing so doesn’t only improve the chance of being followed, it also shows that you know what you’re doing.
Stick to reputable sources if possible.
- Proper punctuation and capitalisation
Just like sharing findings tells a lot about your credibility, so does the presentation of your tweets. Make sure that what you write is up to standards.
No one likes an bad picture and I completely agree with the point that a photo goes much further on Twitter than a logo does. And that’s not just for freelancers. People follow people on Twitter first, not ideas! They have to like YOU before they care about what you care about.
I agree that sharing too much personal info can impact your followers, it doesn’t necessarily mean the will be negatively impacted. Know why your followers follow you and if you personal happenings are interesting to them…it matters. Again they are following you, they want to know about you. Instead of sharing just that your 2 year-old puked on your new loafers and your husband never helps with the laundry, tie that in with what it did for your week as a freelancers, it’s easy with a little effort.
Following everyone without followers is a good way for people to ignore what you have to say and not following you competitors is Social Media suicide in my opinion.
As far as integrating your Tweets with Facebook…it’s called Selective Tweets! Try out you will be glad you did!
Snappy, I think you went a bit overboard on your explanations. I think people are fully aware about 2 year olds puking is not a good idea.
There’s nothing wrong with following people that will never follow you. I would never expect Robert Rodriquez or Adobe to follow me. In fact, that’s pretty stupid to think they may. However, you are using Twitter to get the word out about your services. So follow like-minded individuals (you call them competitors) and other community-based accounts. Before you know it, you’ll have a good mix of followings/followers. I would NEVER subscribe to the fact that you need to have an equal amount or close to an equal amount of followings/followers. That’s plain dumb.
I’m sorry but a photo is a photo. To a certain extent, it should be tasteful and get to the point, but in the end, it’s just a photo. I think we’re all smart enough as freelancers here to know we shouldn’t be standing next to a topless female giving the thumbs up while a picture is taken, and using that as our photo for twitter on our WORK account. I’m sorry but that as one of the ways not to use twitter was a bit underwhelming.
If you want to cut up and do crazy stuff, use a separate Twitter account. Use a separate blog. Separate work from fun if you feel you need to. I think that’s the most important part left out of this “article”. As with anything, keep work and private life separate. That could’ve been used in place of this article. Sorry, but it’s a true story, bro.
jaded much?
Excellent points, well stated, thanks. I liked Detleff’s other suggestions as well.
Great post – clean, clear, and to the point. Love it!
I just started using twitter and these are really helpful.
Thanks for the info, Melanie!
Snapper, thanks also on the idea on Selective Tweets.
Good advice. I haven’t really used Twitter much in my business because I still don’t understand it. It’s baffling to me actually. It seems like people who sign up for twitter are just signing up to see a bunch of ads!
I will start a “do-over” with my twitter account. Thanks!
Great succinct post. It’s amazing how polarized people get on the concept of segmenting your social media postings into categories. There are those that clump it all together, then friend and follow back everyone, and others (I’m in that camp) that are more selective as to who they follow.
I blog about various topics, but one of the most viewed is the one about performing a Friend-ectomy. (http://turningtechinvisible.blogspot.com/2011/05/time-for-friendectomy.html).
This is all part of building your personal brand. A critical part of building your business.
Jumping into the Twitter world can be overwhelming. Great post on some etiquette and tips on the topic.
Great article! I think tying your twitter to Facebook is okay if it’s a business page. I find most people choose one or the other to interact with me on. But it has to be useful content.
Anyway, love the article!
I agree completely that you should have separate twitter accounts for personal and business, your business account should be kept as professional as possible.
Totally agree specially with the twitter app on facebook thing.
I agree with everything you’ve said.
I come across with freelancers who talk too much about politics and that annoys me. But what I hate the most is when they tweet where are they every minute and flood my Twitter front page with their exact location and what they’re doing.
It’s like, damn, I don’t care where you are, Im just following you to see your works and news. It kinda makes me wanna unfollow them, really.