Category Archives: Twitter

Biggest Twitter No-no, Twitter

The Kiss of Death on Twitter

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If you use Twitter, here’s how to lose followers. It’s easy, foolproof and quick. OK, we’re being sarcastic but, believe us, if you do this kind of thing, you’ll lose followers quickly. One of our most trusted ‘followees’ on Twitter has recently started using this technique. Yes, we’ve complained to him but to no avail. We haven’t ‘unfollowed’ this person but we don’t click on his links now. His politics matched our politics too!

If we post a link on Twitter, it’s either to an article that we’ve written or to something that someone else has written or photographed. That’s obvious, right? We don’t post links to anything unless it  takes you directly to whatever it is that we want to share.

The problem comes up when a Twitter user creates an intermediate site. Instead of simply sharing their own posts, they steal a headline from another site, post it on their site and link to the original post. On Twitter, they tweet the link to their site, forcing you to go there first. Of course, they get the benefit of your visit while wasting your time. It’s a cheap, smarmy way to drive up numbers on their site. This is how it works:

Here’s an example of a tweet:

Photo of Cheat 1
You can’t see where the link takes you.

 

This is a standard tweet, a few words describing the subject, followed by a link. If you don’t know about that link,http://bit.ly,  it’s one that has been shortened by the bit.ly website  in order to take up fewer letters on Twitter.

Now, the problem is that you, the user, can’t see where that link leads. Since the words “New York Times (blog)” is mentioned, you’d assume that the link takes you to the New York Times, wouldn’t you? Sadly, it doesn’t. This link takes you to the user’s site first, then, if you’re not too ticked off at being misled, you can head over to the real, original site, in this case The New York Times. Here’s where the link goes:

 

Photo of Cheat 2
Does this look like the New York Times?

 

This is the user’s site, not the New York Times. You’ve been hoodwinked into driving up the user’s numbers by simply following a link that looks like it leads to the New York Times. To us, this is no different than spam. On Twitter, you have to take care of your followers. You should never mislead them, trick them or, in this case, obviously try to deceive them. To us, it’s the kiss of death.

TIP: Twitter uses its own link shortening tool. Unlike bit.ly, Twitter’s link shortener does not mask the name of the site. From the photo above, can you tell where the link leads? No. If this user had used the Twitter tool to shorten the link, you would easily see that it does not lead you to the New York Times. Is this an accident? Again, no. The user knows exactly what he is doing. His intent is to hide the fact that you are going to his site first. He’s wasting your time.

Consider this a rant but also consider how your time is being wasted when this happens to you.  Help us all by not clicking on misleading links like this. Every time you click, you’re helping to perpetuate this kind of activity. We’re going to lobby Twitter to ban users who do this kind of thing. Twitter is very good about enforcing its anti-spam policies. Let’s see if we can get them to ban this stuff, too.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Biggest Twitter No-no, Twitter

Biggest Twitter No-no – do this and you’ll lose followers

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We love Twitter! We really do but there is one big Twitter no-no that bugs us more than any other. Read on to find out what it is. Trust us, if you do this one thing, you will lose followers.

Let’s say you have a website, something like this one. You decide to Tweet links to the site. We do that here at Computers Made Simple. We don’t tweet for every post we add but we do for most of them. We tweet links to this site, to a post that offers information that is helpful. That makes sense, right? Let’s see what some unscrupulous people do.

1. This Twitter account tweets links. Here are some examples:

Photo of Twitter links
See the links that are in each tweet? Let’s find out where they lead.

 

2. You would think that these links might lead to the site that has the information on the story that the tweet is about. Wrong!

Photo of tweet site
The link in the tweet leads to the poster’s site with yet another link to the content mentioned in the tweet.

 

How frustrating is that? You click on the link in the tweet, thinking that it leads directly to the story described in the tweet. Instead, you are lead to the site owned by the Twitter account which posted the tweet. You have to click on the words ‘View Story’  to get to the information referenced in the tweet. The posting profile gets hits on their site but your time is wasted. See the ads? They are all over the place. We’re surprised that Google and Twitter allow this kind of activity but it seems that they do.

If you’re going to tweet links, make sure that they are direct links to the information you mention in the tweet. Don’t aggravate your followers by wasting their time like this.

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Hootsuite, Schedule Tweets, Twitter

Schedule a Tweet in Hootsuite

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One thing you can’t do on the main Twitter page is schedule a Tweet for a later date. If you’re going to be away for the weekend or head out on a holiday and you still want to maintain your Twitter presence, make sure you get Hootsuite in order to schedule Tweets for when you’re away. You can also schedule Tweets to be sent when you’re asleep, too. Here’s how to do it:

1. Look up at the top for the icon that looks like a calendar. Click it.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 1
Look on the top for the calendar icon.

2. There are about seven things to do in this menu.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 2
This is the menu that pops up. Everything you need is here.

3. Type your Tweet in the space provided, where we have typed ‘The tweet goes up here’.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 3
Type your Tweet in the window as we have done.

 

4. Check the ‘Email me when the message is sent’, click on the month and date and, lastly, the time you want it sent. They say that the best times are between 3 and 5 PM Eastern time if you want to hit the big eastern North America market but this is only important if you’re trying to build up a business presence on Twitter.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 4
Date, email confirmation, etc. It’s all here.

 

5. Finally, make sure you check that all the circled areas are filled out. If you want to insert a link, Hootsuite will shorten it up for you, just insert it in the box provided. Make sure you choose which account you want to send the Tweet from as well as which month and which date then decide on AM or PM, according to where you are in the world. Here’s a reminder of which things to fill out:

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 5
Circled areas are important to make decisions about.

 

6. Once you’ve completed your entry, click on the Schedule button to actually schedule the Tweet. You will want to create a new stream of scheduled Tweets in one of your tabs for the particular account you’re Tweeting from. Once you do that, you can see your scheduled Tweets and edit them, if necessary.

Thanks for reading!

Add streams, Hootsuite, Twitter

Hide Tweets in Hootsuite

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We’ve been using Slipstream, available here: Slipstream , to hide some user’s tweets on the main Twitter site. Now that we’ve switched to Hootsuite, we had to figure out a way to hide some of the endless tweeters that we follow. Yes, we could simply ‘unfollow’ those people but most of them are average users who took the effort to follow us. We don’t feel right about unfollowing them but we don’t want to read all of their tweets, either. Here’s how we did it.

1. Obviously you have to have a Twitter account and be using Hootsuite, right? In this example, you should probably have made some lists in Twitter. Here’s how to make a list in Twitter: Lists in Twitter .

2. If you don’t follow many accounts on Twitter, make one list for everyone but the person(s) you want to hide. Name that list ‘regulars’ or something similar. On Hootsuite, these accounts will still show up on your Home stream but we’ll show you how to add your other streams to the main panel.

3. Your main Hootsuite window looks like this before you add any streams:

Photo of Hootsuite main panel
No tabs? You won’t see anything here until you add a social account and a stream.

 

4. When you want to actually see something in the panel, click the + sign up at the top, choose your social network and then add a stream. Hootsuite has some default streams as you can see here:

Photo of Hootsuite default streams.
There are the default Twitter streams. ‘Home’ is every tweet from everyone you follow.

 

5. If you have some lists set up, choose the fourth tab from the left. Choose the ‘Regular’ list that you created in Twitter and click ‘Create Stream’. Here are some lists on one of our accounts:

Photo of Hootsuite lists.
You will see your lists on the lists tab.

 

6. Once you add some streams, this is what your Hootsuite main panel will look like:

Photo of populated Hootsuite main panel.
Streams are on tabs. A tab is just a set of streams.

 

7. A tab is a full panel on Hootsuite. It can be made up of several streams from one social network account or streams from different social network accounts. In the photo above, we’ve added streams from two different Twitter accounts.

Hootsuite offers you a full range of options, all for free. We’ve just scratched the surface here. Give it a shot. Let us know what you think.

Thanks for reading!

Fake Profiles, Twitter

Fake Twitter Profiles – what’s the point?

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As most of you know, we’re on Twitter. We use Twitter to share links to our own posts plus links to other sites that match our interests and political leanings. If you use Twitter, you know that fake profiles abound on that particular social media outlet but we’re a bit confused about our latest discovery. One tiny company, a Canadian company unfortunately, is using Twitter to promote itself but, and this is the sad part, they are doing it in what seems to be a devious, smarmy, backhanded way. Here’s the scoop on what they are doing.

Someone followed us on Twitter. No big deal. We don’t have all that many followers but we manage to pick up a few here and there every week. Unlike some users, we actually try to read the tweets that come through, if not every day, then most days. Sure, we hide some very active users but even they share some good links. At this point, we have more followers than followees, if you know what we mean.

The person that followed us seemed to be OK on the surface but, after checking, we found out that ‘she’ represents a company that has a history of using fake profiles in order to drum up business. First, they create a profile using a photo of a pretty girl. Then they start to add friends or followers in order to promote their business website. This isn’t like BestBuy or Dell using Twitter effectively to promote their business, nothing like that. It’s a rather devious, and silly, attempt to promote a business that should know better.

We’ve seen this kind of thing in China quite frequently. A website will enable direct chats with a sales agent, let’s call her Ruby. There is a photo of Ruby and she looks quite nice, even somewhat hot, if you get our drift. The problem is that Ruby is actually some guy named Tom, no more a female than any of the people who work at this questionable company with the fake Twitter accounts. All the people listed on their site are men. It seems obvious where their heads are when they try to trick Twitter users by using an attractive girl’s photo to promote their business. So far, we’ve found two fake profiles but we’re sure there are more.

A word to the wise, check out who is following you before you blindly follow them back. Promoting your business with fake profiles is no different than spam. We don’t post the name of the website, that’s for sure but we will post photos of the two fake profiles:

Photo of fake Twitter profile
An example of what to look out for. Pretty girl, link to site, no different than spam.
Photo of another fake Twitter profile
They forgot to say ‘long walks on the beach’…

It’s obvious from the company’s site that their clients are dealing with amateurs. First, it’s a WordPress site. That in itself isn’t bad but for a promotion and design company, the slow load times are painful. We can only assume that they don’t have a dedicated server and/or their webmaster doesn’t know what they’re doing. Second, there are typos and bad English all over the site. That’s a vital clue to figuring this all out. If a company doesn’t take the time to edit their own website, you can bet that they won’t give you professional service.

This isn’t a huge problem but we want to make you aware of what’s out there. We’ve outlined the problems with Facebook already. Every now and then we’ll let let you know about scams on Twitter.

Thanks for reading!