So here is the thing that I find with most, not all but most of the tools that offer to explode my business, most of them are just straight out spam. Sorry don’t want to offend people but by offering to just follow someone for mentioning something in their twitter stream is a REALLY poor way of getting followers. You should MANAGE your users not SPAM them build a relationship by having the same interests and wanting to share the same information with those people. Notice the word SHARE social media is a two way stream although some forget this in there blatant disregard for everyone else’s tweets and just spit out thousands of their own affiliate links to basically poor quality products from clickbank.

I know some of you reading this will already be aware of the fact that I have been involved in the development of a product to properly manage your users. The product is called TweetPromote and that is a straight link through to the site if you want to go and have a look, if you don’t then no problem but please be aware of the fact that this has been designed in a way to not spam your way to getting banned.

“Banned, banned how the hell do you get banned”, I hear you cry. Well simple basically carry on autofollowing people (bots and porn included) and using all the tools to increase the number that you follow and follow you back, but you don’t actually benefit because the REAL people will eventually call you out and send you messages asking you to stop sending them trash and that includes auto DM´s!

I know of one account where the person who owned the account decided that they could make a lot of money from their twitter e-book about how to make loads of money from twitter. Well after sending the same message out once an hour for 3 weeks people started to ask them to stop. Eventually enough people blocked the account for Twitter to take action. Now this person had over 45,000 people that they were following and unfortunately because they didn´t give a damn about them they lost them and all the hard work that they put in to get those followers in the first place. Lesson learned the hard way.

TweetPromote (again a direct link should you want to go and have a look) doesn’t spam it simply helps you discover interesting people to follow so when you are followed back you are followed by people with the same interests. Not only that but it helps you not follow spam and bot accounts which are easy to see in the 100 user a page layout they have, you will see what I mean.

I have been using TweetPromote on my own account @bungeespin (please feel free to follow me if you would like to) And have seen it grow fairly rapidly with people who are interesting to me. People I enjoy talking to about the work that I do in SEO, Wordpress and Online Marketing, which good cause in the time I have been using the tool I have not only met some cool people but learned a lot as well.

As I have said all along Twitter is a hugely powerful tool for a great number of reasons yet if you abuse it then you will eventually suffer the consequences.  If you PROPERLY manage your users and treat them with respect, while making sure you talk about what you are both interested in, you will love the results.

Before I get accused of going off on a rant, this isn’t a rant at all merely a look into how some people seem to forget that when they are talking to people online no matter what the medium they forget their manners. Lets take my current favorite social media and the one that everyone is talking about “Twitter”. I have been on there for a while and built up a fair following that I am very proud of as they keep me highly informed and entertained.

However every now and again when I follow people I get the inevitable messages from people “Hey here is a free dead wombat! Click here!”. Back in March I was luck enough to attend a Stompernet Live event where Perry Belcher gave a fantastic presentation on how he had built thousands of followers in under 190 days. He described this as the bbq syndrome. Basically when you go to a bbq and you grab a beer or get handed one depending on how well you know the hosts, then you talk to your friends and fellow guests and get introduced to those you don’t know.

Many believe that the right way to behave on Twitter is to open the door and say “Hi Come on in! Before we let you go out the back and meet everyone just sit down in front of this white board and let me tell you a little bit about what I do!” I am the first to admit that Twitter is a very powerful marketing tool but most of the people I follow are recommended to me by other people I follow as they feel I will find them interesting. Personally I am not interested in having a billion followers like some celebs out there who feel their ego needs polishing in order to get on with their lives, but having people follow me who are interested in the same things I am is important to me.

So some of the things that people do that I feel are rude and need to have a serious think about are:

1. Posting a link that takes you to a brief of the link that you actually meant to post because you want people to visit your blog, don’t do it please its boring and I as many of those I know on Twitter will unfollow you for it.
2. Please for the love of small furry animals don’t introduce yourself to me by saying “Hey come and look at this…..” Cause chances are I already have two of them and if I don’t I probably don’t want it in the first place. Seriously are you telling me you convert with this trash?
3. If you are going to send me a DM telling me how wonderful your new follower is or asking me a question and you want a DM reply you need to follow me back!!!! If you are struggling with Twitter and how it works then you can read a simple guide on it and I am sure they all tell you that it is a permission based media for DM’s!
4. Please don’t follow me then unfollow me and get upset if I don’t follow you back! If I haven’t followed you back it is probably because you don’t have the same interests as me so I am doing us both a favor in the long run.
5. Do not complain about the number of bots that follow you if you are using an auto follow program.

Making sure that you get the right balance in what you do on Twitter is not an art form as some may tell you it is but it is just being yourself and if you would thrust your products in peoples faces the second you meet them and get annoyed when they don’t want to know you, carry on. However if you are like most of the planet and have an ounce of respect then please introduce yourself, give good information and convince me that you are worthy of purchasing from before you try and sell me toothpaste for my sleeping disorder. Just ask yourself simply “What would my parents say if they knew I was behaving like this….!”