A Twitter Study 2: Your Ass is Getting Deleted

[ Read Part 1 ]

I’m happy to report to you that I have finished cleaning up my client’s following list from over 3,100 down to just a little under 400. There is still some fat to trim and some tweeps to start following, but overall, we are off to a great start.

Since I’ve gone through thousands of accounts, I came across many profiles and tweeting styles that baffled me. Some of them, in hindsight, I should’ve just taken a screenshot of as a lesson for all. More than anything, I have learned so many things about what one should NOT do in a twitter profile.

Twitter handle, avatar, and profile can tell you a lot about the person/account.  Much like how you’d make sure you look professional before you head out to meet a client, your business twitter profile should be as professional as you are.  You don’t need much for your profile to grab attention and not be considered junk.

Pick an easy to type and remember, and short and sweet handle

Remember that your name takes up character space when people mention you in their tweet. Signing up for @MyBusinessReallyRocksYall, while descriptive, might not be the best idea. At the same token, condensing into something of a license plate cypher makes it difficult for people to remember and to understand.  Say, who would remember @MyBizRllyRoxYll.  Also, make sure to spell things correctly.  I came across a twitter account for a local news tweets that spelled the town’s name wrong in the handle.  @LosAngelees_news_alerts.  Now, that’s the news you CAN’T trust.

Change your profile image right away

Not in a few hours. Not tomorrow. CHANGE IT NOW!  Even some dedicated spammers change their profile images right away–mostly with someone else’s image stolen off the internet. But if they even take time to fake an identify, why would you want to go around tweeting like a lazy spammer?

Write your 160-character profile in full and check your spelling

The 160-character profile is the ultimate elevator pitch.  Sure, you can be funny, ironic, and/or cryptic about yourself on your profile as long as casual lurkers can get a gist of who you are.  If the lurkers can’t glean much from the profile, it’s likely that they’re not going to stick around.  There were numerous accounts I deleted because their profiles told me nothing and their tweets weren’t clarifying that for me either.

Be clear and concise as to who you are. Check your spelling. And resist the urge to excessively use ALL CAPS, #hashtags, special characters and other ASCII art (seriously, that’s ANNOYING!), and Text/Chat language.

Sidebar: Condensing the tweet into text/chat language is my pet peeve.  I’m an advocate of spelling everything out in my 140 character tweets as well as in my profile.  If you can’t spell everything out in the space allotted, then your message has just missed the point of twitter.

And one of a very good profile example I could think of is this. Forgive me.

Short and sweet twitter handle. Non-Egg avatar. Concise, yet funny, profile description.  Dare I say it? Winning!

Since I was going through so many twitter accounts. Some of them emerged as spectacularly bad profile.  Eventually, I started tweeting them at #YourAssIsGettingDeleted. (I know it should be “unfollowed”. But “deleted” is just more satisfying…)

Some of these accounts fail to follow basic the criteria I mentioned earlier. Of course, which account you think is appropriate or not to follow, that’s totally up to you. But I mean, some of these SCREAMED to be deleted.

Your ass is getting deleted if…

  • YOUR PROFILE INFORMATION IS IN ALL CAPS JUST IN CASE NOBODY PAYS ATTENTION.
  • Or #everything #is #in #hashtags #just #in #case #you #want #to #know #what #useless #topics #they’re #interested #in
  • Or has excessive amounts of [heart symbols]
  • Your avatar is the Twitter Egg. No, I don’t even care if that the account is spammy or not. No avatar, no follow.
  • Even worse, your avatar is STILL the Twitter Egg despite the fact that you have been using the account to tweet regularly for a few years.
  • But worst of all, the above account is for an “established marketing company”.
  • While billing yourself as a marketing “professional”, your avatar is of yourself, shirtless, looking very Jersey Shore “guido”.
  • Your twitter handle is a jumble of letters and numbers. (Usually accompanied by the Twitter Egg avatar.)
  • Or in 1337 speak (that’s “leet speak”, the geeky way of spelling by substituting numbers for letters). I mean, SERIOUSLY? Who still DOES that?!
  • When every other, if not all, of your tweets, you use the word “c*nt”. Profanity in tweets is one thing. I swear on twitter on and off myself. But that was too much.
  • Your profile says “Follow me and I’ll follow you back”.
  • Or “I like to enter sweepstakes”.
  • Or “I like the share links to discounts”.
  • Or “I’m one of the coolest people you’ll ever meet”.
  • Or “I’m a kind of a hipster”…which no real hipster would admit to that.

hipster

But I digress.

Have you come across any twitter profiles that qualify for the #YourAssIsGettingDeleted list? Share!

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