Creating Noise On Twitter

Noise On Twitter

I was chatting to a friend this evening and we started chatting about the people that schedule a huge amount of tweets and run accounts on a mixture of autopilot and human interaction.

It follows the tweet earlier today from someone posting out a link to my blog post Schedule and Automate Social Media from back in September 2010 that seemed to get loads of comments.

Getting a balance in your work / social media life is key to success in both. On the one hand, if you spend all day in social media (easily done), you get no work done. The other, if you spend no time in social media, it becomes ineffective.

But one twitter account that I look at recently shocked me a little. Let me ask you a question : Is 35,000 tweets in 500 days too much?

That is averaging 70 tweets a day, everyday. How much automation has gone into that? Well looking at it there is a lot or repetition, granted a lot of interaction, but is 70 tweets in a day just noise?

Are any followers interested in someone that much?

It is almost verging on the celebrity. But actually… even @WOSSY has only 12.5k tweets in 700 days – that’s an average of 17 in a day; a lot less.

I guess my plea’s for those that I follow and those that I advise in social media marketing are:

  • Don’t do it for just numbers sake
  • Tweet relevant content
  • Minimise or bin out the repetitive auto tweets
  • Do not treat social media as your only marketing tool
  • Build relationships first
  • Sell last!

What are your thoughts?


About the Author

Ant Hodges is a seasoned Internet marketing professional and mentor for small businesses and start-up's. Having been successful, and not so successful at times, Ant now runs a busy SEO and Internet marketing company called HodgesNet and helps to serve start-up businesses with his expertise and experiences to get the right foundations in for success.

  • http://www.skillett.com Keiron

    I’ve only recently looked into automation for Twitter, more for my business account from my personal one (as the business one often gets neglected when I’m busy).

    I don’t mind some level of automation, but I hate it when it’s blatantly obvious every time….

  • Ant Hodges

    With you on that one Keiron… A balance needs to be struck

  • http://www.nappmember.co.uk Dave Clayton

    I have a magic button for those kind of tweeters……’unfollow’ ;o)

    Personally I don’t see the point of automating, I prefer the ‘real timeness’ of Twitter. So you automate some ‘blah’, I read it and want to engage….oh, but wait, where are you ? Nowhere, I don’t care about your response 3 hours later, the moment has passed, I have moved on, new things happening.

    I have 3 accounts, one I barely use for my freelance venture. The other two are me and my ‘nappmember’ persona. Both accounts I retweet a lot of things I think are relevant to the people who follow me and that is a nice modest number. The rest is just me saying what I think I need some feedback on, commenting on the current tweets or trends and generally engaging with my little community. Trying to make my interaction worthwhile without getting up in peoples grills and being a nuisance.
    That’s just how i use Twitter and i have to say it has yielded many great contacts and fantastic networking for my personal ventures, particularly with NAPP / Photographers / Designers.
    We may use it at work for two new ventures but I need to research the right kind of community to engage with first to get a return on the time spent and brand value.

    So, anyone seen MySpace lately, someone said they spotted it on a park bench with a bottle of Thunderbird and singing ‘I did it my way’ ;o)
    Gnite gents.

  • http://smigly.tv/ allen mezquida

    It is just noise Ant! You’re right, striking a balance is key.

    Carry on-A

    • Ant Hodges

      Great video Allen – thanks for stopping by and sharing. Ant

  • http://www.veronicapullen.co.uk Veronica Pullen

    I agree Ant. I follow someone who tweets about 50 automated sales tweets every day with a rotation of about 8 messages. The problem for me is that they are someone I know IRL so unfollowing them opens a new can of worms.

    My bugbear is automated tweets which run off a feed from Mashable etc. I keep wishing that Mashable would send a rogue link to the feed which would then get auto tweeted by the guilty parties! Hahahaha!