Using Twitter for networking before, during and after conferences
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about 10 Common Mistakes on Twitter. The list below includes 10 more mistakes I’ve noticed users making on Twitter. Now, you have no excuse of using Twitter the wrong way 🙂 Enjoy!
1. Promoting yourself or your company
If you only created your Twitter account to say “I’m an English-Greek translator available/looking for assignments”, you won’t get any clients or followers that way, believe me. Potential clients might think that if you’re that desperate, you’re probably not that good a translator to start with. Promote your professionalism by tweeting interesting and useful stuff in order to get clients interested so they can click at your website or other professional webpage and learn all about the services you offer.
And for some translation agencies I’ve noticed on Twitter: You’re not going to find new clients on Twitter by posting “We offer trans services in 900 languages” multiple times or even once a day. Stop doing that. As with the translators’ accounts, put some time into finding interesting stuff to tweet about. Include updates about your company blog, news or anything else that your followers might find interesting. And if you want to advertise your services, make it subtle.
2. Blog promotion
Of course you’ll send an update when you publish a new post in your blog. And if you’re not doing that, start immediately. Unless you only write for yourself (why do you have a blog and not a journal then?). Don’t tweet about it 5 times in the same day though. 1-2 is enough, maybe once more the next day. People will get bored seeing the same thing over and over again.
If you’re wondering what I consider a nice way to let people know you just published a new post, here it is: First write something to let people know that you’re the author of the post (obviously you can’t add your own Twitter name in the tweet), e.g. My new blog post: Then, add the title, e.g. Translators & their pets. Finally, add the hashtags related to your post, in this case #xl8 #t9n and maybe #pets J
3. Quantity of tweets
Avoid tweeting too much (more than 12-15 tweets per day) or too little (once every week/month). People will either get bored of you ‘hijacking’ their timeline or forget about you respectively.
4. Frequency of tweets
If you want to send a specific number of tweets every day, don’t just send them all at once. Spread them out over the day. And if you don’t want to log in to Twitter every once in a while to send your next tweet, you can schedule your next tweets using a free service, e.g. Hootsuite or Socialoomph.
5. Pls. follow me
Never beg for followers, that’s tacky. Only your existing followers can see that anyway, what’s the point?
6. Hashtags
Don’t add a hashtag in every word in your tweets, only add hashtags to the words that are relevant to the tweets content. And please, stop adding irrelevant hashtags just for the sake of it. For example, if your tweet talks about Facebook, don’t add #xl8. Of course, if we’re talking about a link to a blog post where a translator is talking about the benefits of Facebook for his/her profession, then by all means do add #xl8. You get my point.
7. Conversations
Sure, you can have a conversation on Twitter, but the 140-character updates can be somewhat limited. So, if you have a lot of things to say, take it to the next level and send an email. And always be careful of what information you share publicly. Use messages (DMs) for sensitive information.
8. Replies
Always use the Reply button on the specific tweet you want to comment on. Otherwise, the recipient won’t know what you’re referring to.
When you press Reply on Twitter, all the names that appear in the tweet you want to reply to appear. If you want to reply to everybody then leave them as is and add your answer. If not, then it’s just spamming. For example, when you say thank you for an #ff, don’t include everybody in the original #ff list, just the person who mentioned you.
9. Attitude
You think you’re better than everybody else and Twitter is a great platform to talk about yourself and only that. Let me save you some time. Nobody is going to listen.
10. Venting
Sure you can send a few tweets about something that frustrated you. But there’s a limit. Be careful what and whom you talk about, don’t forget your tweets are visible to anyone on the Web.
What have I missed? Any other mistakes you’ve noticed people (or us for that matter) making on Twitter? Let us know in the Comments section below or drop us an email.
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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Hola Cat,
Today is my fun online activity day, so just saw your new article and thought of replying, as we had already exchanged replies on the previous article related to this one.
Again, most of these recommendations are (at least for me) common sense. However, I still tend to believe that there are actually “no rules” in Twitter.
I personally don’t use Twitter as a marketing tool, though I have exchanged DMs that were strictly business-related (in just a couple cases with some minimum results).
I still use it as a source of really interesting information related to all those areas of personal and/or professional interest. This has opened my online world to websites and people who are really interesting for me, because of personal/work affinities.
To me that is a lot more important than having a million followers with whom you literally cannot have deeper contacts or dialogues, or using it as a form of advertisement (though I have done some daily advertisement of, for example, a place of my own I rent).
In my case, because of periods of more Twitter activity, I think I have more or less managed to build a “reasonable” (at least for me) number of tweetcontacts with whom I maintain a nice exchange, some obviously kind of personal, but many others related to the mentioned work/cultural interests or just plain affinities.
So I do disagree with this idea that you have to follow a more or less strict schedule or number of times of tweeting . When people who really “follow” you look you up (they could have you in a list or just as a separate search in, for example, Hootsuite), they can go through your tweets to see what you have posted lately. That is what I do with many contacts I keep in Twitter.
Also, because I think social network sites can be extremely addictive and “steal” precious personal or work time, I make it a point to check thoroughly Twitter only when my other activities allow it. So what I do is I use different web browsers for different activities. For example, I use Firefox to keep all online dictionaries and glossaries open, I use Safari to manage email accounts and I use Google Chrome for Twitter and newspaper related websites, and in this case I only open Chrome when I really have time for fun social networking.
But of course I can understand that there are many ways to use networking websites such as Twitter or Facebook. That is the beauty of human variety.
Muchos saludos,
Ivette
Hola Ivette,
As mentioned in the previous post as well, there are no right or wrong ways of using Twitter. Every user should do it as he/she sees fit and in the most enjoyable way possible. Regarding the quantity and frequency of tweets, I don’t think there should be a specific schedule either, but it’s better to avoid the extremes, i.e. 50 tweets in a single day or all together (unless of course you’re having a conversation in which case there’s no limit) or no tweets at all for a few months (that only means that you’re not using it anyway).
I’m using the different-browsers trick as well 🙂 Everything work-related in Firefox (incl. email) and my Reader, Twitter, Facebook etc. pages in Chrome.
Happy Easter!
Catherine
How funny that intensive use of browsers makes you arrive at the same tricks (and double funny that we both use Firefox for work-related websites; I guess their interface is easier for this use.).
Happy Easter to you, too, Catherine!, though in the Spanish-related culture/tradition Easter is more of a mourning than a happy celebration o_O (but I’m kinda pagan, so…).
P.S.: I forgot to say that I also love the cute tweety birds on this article. 🙂
Hi Catherine,
I agree with the part about over- and under-tweeting. Personally, I unfollow people, even if I usually like their tweets, if they just tweet too much. I want to follow people who are selective in what they share.
As far the under-tweeters go, I admit that I unfollow people if they only show up once a month.
My point exactly! Especially about the over-tweeting, I completely agree with you. Most of the ‘highly-energetic’ Tweeps do it automatically anyway, they don’t even bother checking what they’re sharing, which is very annoying. As for the under-tweeters, I don’t always notice it when I’m already following them. But, when I look at someone’s profile and the last tweet they sent was “Happy 2012” (just an example since it’s April now), then I don’t follow them, what’s the point?
Thank you for your comment Catherine 🙂
Thanks Catherine! Another good app for scheduling (read spreading out) your tweets is http://www.bufferapp.com. Love it!
Excellent addition, thanks Tess! I haven’t used it yet, but the reviews it’s been getting are great.
I want to weigh in on the subject of “undertweeting.” I won’t unfollow someone simply for tweeting sparsely: if their one tweet a year is worth reading, I’ll keep them. It doesn’t take up any of my space, time, or attention to keep following them when they’re not tweeting. It’s not the same as having near-dead or dead links showing on your blogroll.