Twitter is a great platform for communicating with your audience, but try to avoid these annoying things brands do on Twitter!

Twitter is a pseudo-broadcast medium – that means that on Twitter, more so than most networks, we can drive traffic to landing pages and soft sell our product. That said, there are still a few annoying things brands do on Twitter, and you should avoid them at all costs.

Stagnant Automation

A lot of individuals and brands automate the messages they send out from their Twitter accounts – it’s not a secret, and if it is done properly, it is not a bad strategy. That said, if you are simply pumping out links and calls-to-action, and nothing of substance, you are going to lose the attention of your followers (and your followers themselves).

Ignore Replies

It is a lot of fun to see that someone has sent you a message. Imagine how great it would feel to have an ongoing conversation! A lot of brands make the mistake of ignoring their followers when a reply is sent. Engage!

Endless Links

Again, Twitter is a pseudo-broadcast medium. That does not mean that you should be sharing nothing but links to your followers. They want something with substance. Show your followers why they should keep following you with great content.

Mystery

What’s worse than always including a link with your posts? Posting nothing but links! For those that do not understand how Twitter works, let’s all get on the same page: nothing says spam like a link with no other content. Tell people what they are clicking through to!

ALL CAPS

Even the heading above is annoying. Seeing a tweet pop up written in all caps might do the job of grabbing my attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Grab attention with brief, enticing messages, not loud, annoying caps.

Retweets Only

There are a lot of people out there who share great content on an ongoing basis, and it might seem like a good idea to retweet that content to show people what you find interesting. But this strategy should be included with your original content. Let the world know what you think. Then throw some great retweets in there as well.

Rapid Fire

Have you ever found yourself sitting on Twitter, watching the tweets go by when all of a sudden your stream is flooded by a dozen tweets from the same account? Few things irk people more than this ‘rapid fire’ style of tweeting. Not only does it annoy your followers, it also hurts your brand. A tweet does not have a very long shelf life. If you expect your content to get any exposure, sending it all out at once is not going to be your best bet.

Spellign Erorrs

If there is one thing that hurts your image, it is spelling and grammar errors in your tweets. Proofread your content. It is only 140 characters. There is really no justifiable excuse as to why your tweets have these errors in them. It simply looks lazy.

Can you think of any other annoying things brands do on Twitter? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!