Have You Become A Twitter Bot?
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Julie Barrett
Monday, September 28, 2009
Technology can be a wonderful thing - until some folks unwittingly use it wrong and tick off a whole lot of people without knowing it.
The latest uber annoying use of technology is the feature in the Twitter API that allows for timed posting of status updates. I'm watching a guy right now autoposting the same eight (yes, eight) tweets once an hour. I'm trying to decide whether or not to nudge him with a short direct message or just drop him. He used to be interesting, which is why I followed him. Now he seems to have discovered the dark side of affiliate marketing.
Gosh, I can't blame someone for trying to make a buck, but there's something to be said for overkill. How many of us grew up with the annoying, yet well-meaning, family friend who discovered multi-level marketing? How many of us have one now? You can't get together for coffee without being subjected to a sales pitch. Thankfully, I'm not dealing with that in person these days. Times are tough right now and friends of mine have started selling products on the side. Yet, they manage to remain interesting and avoid behaving like a salesbot to their friends. And guess what? I'm more likely to buy something from them.
What makes the Internet so damned different? I suppose it's the lure of getting a lot of potential bang for a little bit of work - with none of the uncomfortable face-to-face contact. And so it begins: Block paragraph of doom signature lines listing every sale since high school, auto-invites to beg everyone on your friends list to become your fan, and the dreaded automatic tweets.
It's one thing to use software to push a link to your latest blog post of photograph, but it's another to push the same message every single hour. If a friend of yours did this in person, you'd consider intervention for them. Why is Twitter different? Do you think those repetitive tweets make you stand out in a crowd? What they do is infuriate your followers - your core audience - to the point of dropping you from their follow lists.
Here are a few ways to use Twitter right, and a few ways to tell if you're doing it wrong:
Good: Posting the occasional line from a work in progress with the hashtag #wip.
Bad: Self-pubbed author posts several lines from his book multiple times every day with the buy link. Clue stick time, author: You got me to follow you because you were saying some interesting things. I don't mind the occasional sales pitch, but leave the constant "buy my book" appeals out of it. You're over saturating your audience.
Good: Posting an update that sales are good, you just won an award, or whatever.
Bad: Auto-tweeting several times a day that you're an award-winning author - especially when the "award" turns out to be a finalist in a pay-to-play contest dominated by authors who paid to get published. And then you tweet the news about yourself in third person. Stop behaving like an overpaid athlete and say something interesting. I don't care if you talk about what you've had for breakfast. At least it's personal and shows the world that you're a real person.
Good: The occasional mention that yes, you do have something for sale.
Bad: I think you get the idea.
If you want people to buy your product, behave like a real person. If I walked into your store or visited you at a signing, would you parrot the same lines over and over, or look me in the eye and say, "hi, how are you? I'm so glad you could come."
I don't care if you're an author, a photographer, or a media conglomerate - it makes no sense to send the same status updates over and over again just because you can. Updates to a breaking story - yes. Attempting to drive your audience to your site for the same unchanged bit of information - no. Repeat after me: Hits do NOT equal sales. Hits do NOT equal sales. Come on, you can do it. Publishers and writers: You work hard to engage readers every day with your product, and it stands to reason you should be doing the same thing with your marketing.
Try the personal approach. Ditch the canned tweets, the sig lines of doom, the "invite all of my friends with a single click" forms of so-called marketing and reach out to your audience. That's what the Internet is all about.
Tags: Technology
Filed under: Technology
Comments are closed
Rhonda Eudaly Simpson said:
Amen, sister. The more I see the same tweets over and over, the less likely I am to buy whatever product they're attempting to sell - even if they DO do interesting tweets in the middle.
Date: 9/28/2009 12:08:36 PM
Date: 9/28/2009 12:08:36 PM
Rhonda Eudaly Simpson said:
Amen, sister. The more I see the same tweets over and over, the less likely I am to buy whatever product they're attempting to sell - even if they DO do interesting tweets in the middle.
Date: 9/28/2009 12:08:36 PM
Date: 9/28/2009 12:08:36 PM
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