Using Twitter for networking before, during and after conferences
I love Twitter. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably keep saying it until I persuade everybody I know to start using it. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can read about its numerous advantages and see what you’ve been missing out on. It’s a great tool to meet new interesting people, build your online presence and grow your network. However, some people get it wrong and most of the times they fail to appreciate it and eventually stop using it or end up annoying their followers.
These are some of the common mistakes people make on Twitter.
1. Professional or personal use
If you want to talk about both aspects of your life, you should have two separate accounts. Your friends might not be interested in news about your industry, and your professional contacts are definitely not interested in the women you want to date, the food you just ate and how handsome your boyfriend is.
2. Personal tweets
Based on #1, avoid sharing too much personal information in your professional account. But, DO send a few tweets now and then that show you’re a human and not a robot. After all, this is the best way to engage with your followers (see #3).
3. No engagement
One of the best things on Twitter are the conversations with your peers. They can start with a question (or an answer to a question), a remark or opinion about something you read etc. I am guilty of that mistake (not taking part in conversations) in the past few months due to limited time, but I remember fondly the useful conversations I used to have with my Twitter friends.
4. Retweeting
Personally, I don’t use Twitter’s RT button. I prefer the old-fashioned way and taking the time to do it manually. What that means: My perfect way of retweeting is putting the original tweet/blog post title first, then the link, the author’s name and finally the person I retweeted it from (and then the related hashtag of course). That way everybody is recognized. Both the author and the original Twitterer can see your retweet in their Mentions and that gives you a bigger chance to engage with them.
5. Your username
Don’t make it hard for people to remember your username. Your Twitter handle is as important as your brand name, your blog name etc. It helps your engagement with other people.
6. Your bio
Sadly, that’s a mistake most people do. It’s just a few words. Why leave it blank? Add a few words about who you are, what you do, a link to your website etc. This is the first thing potential followers read. If it’s blank, what does that say about you?
7. Your avatar
Are you still using the impersonal default Twitter image? Add a nice professional or professional-looking photo (preferably), your company logo even an image that reflects your personality (don’t take it too far).
8. Following too many people all at once
Take your time to choose the people you want to follow. It’s not a numbers game. Following hundreds of people only because that raises your chances to get more follows back doesn’t sound like a very beneficial way of using Twitter, does it? What kind of image does that give to people who check out your profile to decide if you’re worth following or not?
9. Too much attention to numbers
Twitter is all about the content, the relationships formed. Don’t obsess over the number of people following you, the ones you follow and the tweets you’ve sent. Focus on sharing useful content and the numbers will raise naturally.
10. Automatic DMs
You press the Follow button and you immediately get a DM saying “Hi, how are you?” or “Visit my website to learn more about me” or “Download my very useful ebook”. That’s annoying, right? The first impression you get is that the person you just followed is a spammer, you don’t want other people thinking that about you. Only use DMs when you have something of essence to say.
I have done some of those mistakes in the past but as the time went by I tried to learn from them. Of course, there’s no specific recipe for successful Twitter use, you just experiment and find the right way that suits your specific needs and makes it more fun for you.
Are you guilty of any of those mistakes? Any annoying habits your Twitter friends have or that you consider wrong?
Stay tuned for the next part of this post 10 (More) Common Mistakes on Twitter in a few weeks and Happy Tweeting!
About the author
Catherine Christaki has been a full-time English-Greek translator since 2001 and co-owner of Lingua Greca Translations since 2012. She specializes in Information Technology, Medical, and Technical texts and loves writing for the Adventures in Technical Translation blog. She regularly shares her experience and insight on social media and blogging for translators, giving interviews and presenting at conferences. Connect with her on Twitter @LinguaGreca.
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Hi Catherine,
For starters, I like the two cute tweety birds. 😉
But I kinda disagree about point 1 (and 2). I think you can perfectly use the same Twitter profile for both your work and personal activity/interaction. I honestly think that for other people to see how you behave/are in both areas of your life can give a lot of information about you as a person AND as a professional.
Of course you can use two profiles, but to me that is just too time-consuming. If my “professional” followers get annoyed by my “personal” stuff, I guess they can always unfollow me, but I honestly think that some of the so-called “professional” interaction is actually also “personal”, because you can get engaged in chats that, though apparently “professional”, they might turn pretty “personal”.
I guess I do not believe in the idea of separating our personal and professional persona, but I definitely can imagine that this works in general for most people.
Saludos,
Ivette
Hello Ivette! I liked the birds too, couldn’t find any pictures with Twitter and mistakes so I thought it would be nice to have some cuteness 🙂
I only have one Twitter account too, used mainly for professional purposes and by that I mean networking with my peers, not really advertising my business etc. I do send some personal tweets sometimes (mostly about work too, but other stuff as well) and you can definitely see what I’m like from my interactions with others.
By personal, I mean really personal stuff or focusing your tweets almost entirely on those.
A guy I used to follow wouldn’t stop talking about the women he liked. Another shared every personal detail about her breakup for 2 weeks. And they both used the same accounts to interact with clients, peers etc. and networking. I consider this wrong.
When a friend of mine (not a translator) asks me about Twitter, I discourage them about following me because my tweets about translation would bore them to death. I recommend Facebook or something else instead. See what I mean about personal and professional?
Yes, I totally agree that tweeting about your “private” life is definitely out of the question, but I also like to think of Twitter as some kind of “testimonial” of my own life, as part of the trace I will leave behind.
As I still don’t really like Facebook (mostly due to privacy-related reasons), this explains that I use Twitter for just about everything. So I think I have posted a couple of tweets that are really personal, like when my father died, a year ago, when I posted a link to a videoclip of a singer that was his favorite. It was a kind of homage to his memory, and I really did not think it was out of place. I also tweeted about the death of my 16-year old cat (also last year), because, again, it is like a little tribute to his memory.
But I see what you mean, “common sense”.
Ciao!
Ivette
P.S.: nothing wrong with the cute tweety birds, cuteness is cool as far as I’m concerned. 🙂
Hi Catherine!
I really liked your list and I agree with most of it. However, much like Ivette, while I am sensible to what you say at #1, I would find it too time-consuming to manage separate accounts. It also happens that there are a lot of people that I would be following with both accounts, because these people happen to be working in the translation/language field and engaging to interact with. Therefore I would rather stick to a single account and try to let show who I am beyond being a translator.
That being said, you’re right that too much personal/irrelevant info (#2) is bad. I have actually unfollowed quite a few people from my field of expertise because they wouldn’t stop tweeting anything that crossed theirs minds. That I follow you doesn’t mean that I want to know whether you like how your hair looks today, but if you’ve read an essay on line that made you think or react, for instance, I do want to learn about it because I possibly want to know you a little bit beyond your profile picture.
Frédéric and Aleksandra thank you for both your comments 🙂 I agree with you about the time-consuming thing. I also think Twitter isn’t optimal for personal sharing, mostly because everybody can see what you write and there isn’t much room because of the 140-character restriction. Facebook is much better for really personal stuff.
And of course it’s great (and encouraged) to share a bit of personal information in your professional account (as I explained in my comment to Ivette above), I do that too (and btw, I don’t have a Twitter account for personal use).
And another thing about sharing content: I share posts about things that interest me in general, not only about translation (e.g. blogging, lifestyle etc.), so someone could say those are personal too. I guess you see what I mean about personal… Private things that you would preferably discuss with friends and family over coffee, not your peers.
I just thought of a nice example: Rose Newell (@lingocode) sometimes shares info about animal rights and vegetarianism. That’s part of her personality and I really like that about her because it gives me the opportunity to get to know her better.
@Aleksandra As for the different language tweets: I sometimes tweet stuff in Greek, French or German too. Many people tweet in different languages. If you keep a balance between your different-language tweets, it won’t be a problem for your followers. But if your tweets are 90% in Serbian (for example), English followers might be discouraged from following you. When someone new follows me, I have a look at their timeline and if a very high percentage (more than 80%) of their tweets is in a language I don’t know, I see no point in following them.
Thanks Catherine!
I have to admit it, I am often guilty of #4, because most of the time I check Twitter on my smartphone and it’s far easier to retweet that way.
I entirely agree with Frederic on the ‘personal use’ you can make of Twitter. As you said, we are human beings, not robots, so I think you can do it from time to time, as long as it doesn’t get too personal. But what you share on Twitter must not affect your credibility as a professional. Have you read that great article by Anne Diamantidis about social media and online reputation?
http://tweetingandbusiness.com/articles/social-media-marketing-for-translators-back-to-the-basics-%E2%80%93-part-2-online-reputation-credibility
I think you don’t have to set too strict rules about what you do on Twitter. Just listen to your common sense!
Hello Jeanne,
The automatic RT is fine, it’s not an error per se, just a personal preference of mine because it’s easier for the original author or re-twitterer to see that you liked their post and RTed.
Anne always writes and shares great stuff about social media, I’ve read that article.
And I agree about using your common sense. As I said at the end of the post, not everybody can use the same ‘recipe’, each one has their own style, that’s what makes us special 🙂
Dear Catherine,
Thank you for this interesting post. Like many others, I use my Twitter account both for personal and business communication, mostly because I don’t have time to manage two accounts. But, luckily for my followers, I don’t like to share too much personal information (e.g. how I feel, how my hair looks, etc.) so mostly I tweet about articles that are not directly related to my job but that I liked anyway. I also love to edit RT’s and some personal touch to it, so I’m glad that you think it’s a good thing to do.
I tweet both in English and in Serbian (unfortunately, I know I have followers who don’t know English) and sometimes I’m scared that I keep annoying ones or the others by doing that, but I don’t have a choice. I want to keep my connections in both “worlds”, so if someone wants to unfollow me because of that- so be it.
P.S. Unrelated to everything I said, but those Twitter birds are adorable! 🙂
Great post Catherine 🙂
My personal pet hate is people who connect to Twitter once a week and send 10 tweets (mostly RTs) in the space of 5 minutes. I’m a great believer in s p a c i n g tweets out!
Regarding Ivette’s and Frédéric’s comments about two accounts being time-consuming – I’ve been using Twitter since early 2009 and have 3 accounts (one account is very personal, the other two are specialised), but I use Hootsuite (Tweetdeck would be another option), which makes it extremely simple to tweet from different accounts – you just need to select the profile for that particular tweet. And occasionally if I want to send a tweet to all three accounts that’s easy too!
Thank you for your comment Catharine, it’s great to hear the other side as well. I use Hootsuite as well and even though I only have 1 Twitter account, I can imagine how easy it is to use it for multiple accounts. As for your Twitter pet hate (frequency of tweets), it’s included in the blog post that will be published later this week with 10 more common mistakes, thanks for pointing it out 🙂