As expert digital public relations professionals and deft social media marketing types it goes without saying it’s our business to keep abreast of best practice when it comes to the world’s most popular 140-character-based network. Not that we want to blow our own trumpet too loudly.
Of course the pace of development on Twitter, and pretty much every other social network worth its weight in members, is rather overwhelming. But, if there’s one thing that continues to surprise us it’s that many people still don’t really understand the fundamental ways in which should be used to garner the best results.
And without that there’s very little chance of ever mastering the art of tweeting, building followers, and elevating your status, or that of your business, to the position of an online maestro. With this in mind we thought it would be wise to run through five of the most obvious mistakes users continue to make when operating in this area of cyberspace, so take a look below and see which you’re guilty of; any complete innocents can, naturally, proceed directly to the top of the class.
 
Beginning all tweets mentioning another user with @  
Let’s say, for example, that you want to including @SmokinggunPR in a tweet, but the content is relevant to a wider audience. By opening with our handle, @SmokingGunPR, you  restrict who can see that update to people who follow both our Twitter account, and yours. The simplest way to avoid this is by adding a full-stop before the @, therefore ensuring  all your followers, and all our followers, will see the message.
 
Getting involved with members of Team Followback 
There’s a good chance you’ve seen things like Team Followback written either on account descriptions or within tweets themselves. In short, this means that if you follow that handle then the owner will automatically reciprocate the gesture. Our best advice is to avoid like the plague- not only is there a strong likelihood the moniker is a front for some robotic marketing firm, even if it is a real person getting involved with them is only going to make you look desperate.
 
Just because someone sent you an @message it’s OK not to respond
This could well be the most damaging mistake on our list. When you receive a direct message- for instance “@SmokingGunPR we love you, you are the greatest people in the world” – it’s vitally important to respond, and not just out of courtesy. Unresponsive business accounts are usually seen as engaging in poor customer service practices, and once that reputation has developed it’s very hard to reverse those negative assumptions.
 
It’s OK to send the same tweet several times in the same day
A definite no-no, what do you think people take from an account that keeps re-issuing the same 140-character message in a single day? That’s right; whoever is responsible for the handle is lazy and lacks the creative nouse to even slightly re-word or re-structure the tweet. Granted, some statements either deserve or need to be made more than once, but how you do that can mean the difference between success and failure.
 
Auto-posting to Facebook is acceptable 
No, it isn’t. As with our previous point, accounts that automatically send tweets to Facebook, where they are changed into status updates, never come across well in the eyes of the general public. Think of it like this; the two networks are entirely different, offer very different options in terms of what can be done and as such should be treated as two autonomous entities. It may take more time, but the results will be significantly better when you make an effort to exploit their unique qualities.