Since Twitter came onto the social media scene in 2007, almost all social media marketers have started using it to gain an edge in marketing campaigns. Silicon Valley companies we work with like Cisco, McAfee, and SAP all use Twitter extensively. Twitter typically takes up about 25% to 60% of the social media campaign budget. These companies are at the cutting-edge of B2B marketing and their commitment to Twitter is an indication of the value of Twitter in B2B marketing programs.
Unfortunately for marketers, Twitter guidelines can be confusing. The guidelines are often vague and enforced suspension can be handled by automated algorithms. It’s possible for accounts to get suspended during the middle of a campaign due to a misinterpretation of Twitter guidelines.
Here are five important points social media marketers needs to know about doing business and advertising on Twitter:
1) Avoid aggressive following.
- Any user can follow 2,000 people total, but this does not mean that you cannot have more than 2,000 followers. After 2,000 followers, Twitter will pay close attention to your “follower-to-following” ratio. For example, if you are following 5,000 people but only have 100 followers, Twitter will consider that “aggressive following” and will send an error message because you have reached your limit for your account. Repeat violations or overly aggressive following may result in account suspension.
2) Avoid spamming.
- Do not post the same update multiple times on the same day.
- Do not post the same update on multiple accounts (this is not the same as a retweet, or RT, this is if the same company owns multiple accounts and posts the same tweets on each account to garner more attention.)
- When Twitter users constantly follow and un-follow many users, this is what Twitter calls “aggressive follow churn.” The only automated function Twitter allows is auto-follow, which, when enabled, simply means that your account automatically follows any user who first follows you.
- Do not “squat” a username for more than six months. After six months, Twitter can remove that username. Selling usernames is not allowed unless you have arranged a separate agreement with Twitter.
3) Remember to stay within the limits.
- In addition to aggressive following, Twitter has a few other limitations to an account on a daily or timely basis:
a. Direct messages are limited to 250 per day
b. API requests are limited to 150 per hour
c. Updates are limited to 1,000 per day (including retweets)
d. Changes to account e-mail are limited to 4 per hour
e. Followers (daily) are limited to 1,000
4) Third parties are not allowed to submit paid tweets into the Twitter API.
- Promoted Tweets are the only paid tweets allowed. Twitter says that the reason for this is that third parties do not have Twitter and twitterer’s best interests in mind, andTwitter emphasizes the preservation of “long-term success for all advertisers, users and the Twitter ecosystem,” and also want to encourage creativity and innovation.
5) Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends
Although this doesn’t impact account suspension, marketers need to know about these new tools for businesses on Twitter, weighing the costs of paying Twitter directly for promotion versus paying your staff to run campaigns.
Page Wonder Hartley blogged about the benefits of promoted tweets, as well as places where promoted tweets could use some improvement. Although it has not yet been released to all advertising companies, Twitter has given us a few pointers on how promoted tweets work.
- “Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses want to highlight to a wider group of users.” – Twitter Business Help Resources
- Promoted tweets rely heavily on resonance, a platform Twitter is developing currently to determine which tweets will become promoted by measuring a company’s interaction with its customers (“@replies, re-use of hashtags, avatar clicks, hashtag clicks, in-Tweet link clicks, views after Retweet and more”). This indicates that all tweets begin as regular tweets, and Twitter’s resonance algorithm will determine which tweets are eligible to become a promoted tweet.
- Promoted tweets will appear at the top of relevant search result pages, and a “promoted” button will indicate promoted trends.
Although this isn’t an explicit rule in Twitter’s terms of service or guidelines, it is best for businesses to try to keep up with their followers and fellow twitterers: monitor what is being said about your company, pay attention to #hashtags and @replies, and connect with the people behind the brand you are trying to reach out to. Tweet more than just links and promotions. Twitter strongly believes in a friendly environment, and I believe social media marketing on Twitter can and should fall under that category.
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Research and writing assistance provided by Paulina Singhapok of Page One ( Twitter @sf_paulina , paulina@pageonepr.com)
Tags: guidelines, Twitter
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