Angry Twitter Bird sketch by Aaron Riddle. www.acriddle.com

Book promotion coach and social media expert Lynn Serafinn shares her 5 most disliked behaviours on Twitter.

This week I felt I had to express myself. I love Twitter. I love what Twitter has done for my business. I love the people I have met through Twitter over the past year.

But I have been grumbling a bit this past week. My Twitter following has increased a lot over the past month, and there are a few things I’ve noticed in the way some Tweeple  (fortunately a minority) behave on Twitter that really puts me off.

So let me vent just a bit… and let me know if these “Twitter Turn-Offs” ring true for you as well.

Turn-Off Number 1: True Twit

True Twit is a service that allows you to see if the people who want to follow you are “real” people and not “bots”. I HATE it. This is really sending an a-social message to your followers. I’ve made a vow not to bother with people who use True Twit anymore. I’ve got almost 11,000 followers on my main account (nearly 20,000 if you count all 4 accounts I have), and am following over 11,000. I’m tired of having to verify I am a real person. Hello?!

Another reason why I hate it so much is that half of the people who are sending me these True Twit requests are because I auto-followed them in the first place! In other words, I gladly allowed them the “privilege” of following me, but they are asking me permission to follow them. It’s really twisted.

My policy on Twitter is an open door. I would much prefer to weed out the spammers by hand rather than put off new networking friends by making them “work” to follow my tweets.

Turn-Off Number 2: Protected Tweets

Geez zowie, how I hate it when people protect their tweets. From whom? What are they talking about? Are they really using Twitter for sensitive, personal communication?

Basically when I see someone with protected tweets, it sends the following 2 messages:

1)    They don’t really WANT me to follow them and

2)    They don’t trust people very much.

Neither of these messages is very welcoming.

Whenever I go to http://justunfollow.com to see who isn’t following me, the first people I unfollow are the ones with protected tweets.

Turn-Off Number 3: Not following back

People are not OBLIGATED to follow you back on Twitter. However, when I have been following someone for a long time, and even had different @ conversations with them, and they don’t follow back, that’s a turn off.

Again, I prefer to have my account on auto-follow (I use http://socialoomph.com for that) to give the courtesy of following people back who follow me. I think it sends an open message of trust and willingness to connect.

Disconnecting from an unwanted connection on Twitter is far easier than re-establishing rapport with someone who has disconnected from you due to your aloofness towards them. Be open. Be reciprocal. Be trusting.

The only Tweeple who have a valid “excuse” for not following back are

1)    application bots, e.g., @ListNotify

2)    info portals, e.g., @Mashable

3)    large companies that do not represent the thoughts of one particular person, or

4)    Twitter accounts that were set up to send news to fans about celebrities who never (or hardly ever) use the Twitter account themselves.

Turn-Off Number 4: One-Way Tweeting

Ok, I use Twitter for business—a LOT. And I tweet about my business—a LOT. However, I also RT others’ tweets and engage in 2-way conversation—a LOT. I look at people’s profiles and try to address them by first name as much as possible. I recommend them on Follow Fridays. I share the things they post that I think others would like to know about. I meet and make new networking partners, clients and friends on Twitter.

I hate, hate, hate it when someone (unless they are in one of the 4 categories mentioned above) only ever tweets about their business (sometimes the same thing over and over) and never interacts with other people. It tells me they are only there to “get” and not to connect. It’s such a turn-off.

Ugh!

Turn-Off Number 5: Playing the ‘Celebrity Card’

All right, now this one sometimes goes hand in hand with some of the others. In other words, the kinds of people who do some of the above things also frequently ‘play the celebrity card.’

What do I mean by ‘playing the celebrity card’? I mean when people have like 1000 followers and follow less than 10% of these back. Come on! Do you think 1000 followers makes you in SUCH demand that you can actually turn your back on 900 of them and send the message that they are not worthy of your attention? Do you think they will stay following you?

When I go to weed out my non-followers, these are the ones that go next, after the protected tweets.

If you are NOT a ‘legitimate’ celebrity (or, frankly, even if you are), the most inviting Twitter ratio of followers to following is ALWAYS as close as you can get to 1:1. By legitimate celebrity I mean someone whom millions of people want to follow, not because of your tweets, but because of who you are outside of Twitter. You know. Like Oprah. BTW, Oprah has almost 5 million followers, follows only 20 people (all of whom are industry people) but has sent out fewer than 200 tweets. Clearly Oprah does not use Twitter as a business building tool (she doesn’t need to!), but rather as a connection point for people who want to know about what’s happening behind the scenes.

If you are in a similar position with your fans, you can play the ‘celebrity card’ too. But if you are using Twitter to grow your business, don’t play the celebrity card or you will lose your audience fast.

TIP: Ok, so if you are concerned how you can possibly FOLLOW the tweets of all the people who are following you, the answer is: “You don’t have to.” There is an easy solution to the information overload you might experience from following thousands of people on Twitter:

• Make yourself a private Twitter list of your “VIPs” so you can make sure you are catching the updates of your best friends, colleagues, inspirational leader, movers/shakers or whomever else you wish to follow closely.
• Then, create a column for this list in TweetDeck so you can be sure to catch the tweets of your VIPs.
• Then, just scan the “All Followers” column for new people and interesting tweets. Maybe someone new will catch your eye. It’s the easiest way to build your network without going into Twitter overwhelm.

Bonus Turn-Off: SPAMMERS

I almost didn’t bother to mention this because it’s sort of a ‘given’. Spamming isn’t merely a turn-off. It’s grounds for getting you banned from Twitter. DO NOT ever @ someone unless you are engaged in a conversation with them. Sending an @ or a DM message to someone on Twitter (apart from a welcome DM) directing them to click a link is spam. End of subject. I have no tolerance for spammers and feel no guilt whatsoever for reporting them. If I know you, that’s different. If we’re friends, you can send me all the links you want.

Some dead giveways that someone is a spammer:

1)   Their profile pic us usually either the Twitter default pic or a picture of some unknown sexy girl

2)   All their tweets are the same

3)    They have no followers

4)    They @ everyone the same message and it always contains a link. Do yourself a favour and DON’T click these links no matter how tempting they may be. Very often they are phishing for your Twitter password.

So what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Do you have others to add to the list?

Let’s connect! Here are my Twitter IDs:

• @LynnSerafinn - tweeting about everything I do, business or otherwise
• @SpiritAuthors – tweeting about writing, self-publishing, book promotion, especially for mind-body-spirit authors
• @7GracesMarketng - tweeting about healing our fragmented society by changing the way we do business, and info about my upcoming book, talks, etc., “The 7 Graces of Marketing”
• @GardenOfTheSoul - tweeting about my radio show and book of the same name
• @TeknochikUK - tweeting about cool techie innovations that help you develop your social media platform.

And, if you want to see some “positive” tips about using Twitter, subscribe to my Spirit Authors blog. I’ll be posting my article “My Top 5 Twitter Apps” there very soon.

While you’re there, check out my Spirit Authors course “100 Days to Build Your Online Promotional Platform” (Module 2).

About Lynn Serafinn

Lynn Serafinn is transformation coach, bestselling author, radio host and promotional manager for a long list of #1 selling mind-body-spirit authors. She is the author of the bestseller The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self as well as the upcoming book The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell (http://the7GracesOfMarketing.com )

Her membership site Spirit Authors (http://spiritauthors.com) offers training, coaching, business-building and inspiration for mind-body-spirit authors, whether established or aspiring. Contact Lynn about YOUR book project at at http://spiritauthors.com/contact.

Sign up for Lynn’s bi-monthly newsletter Creative Spirit (fill in form BELOW) packed with inspirational articles, online networking tips, broadcast guide to her radio show, and news about upcoming spiritual author book releases.

Throughout the year, Lynn also hosts large-scale telesummits with world-class speakers on a range of mind-body-spirit topics. Your subscription to Creative Spirit will ensure you’ll be the first to know how to attend these free events.

…a completely random blog post that has nothing whatsoever to do with work, business or anything serious…

Well, Mercury is back to his old tricks again.

Do any of you remember back in February when there were so many problems on the Internet? Those of you who are on Twitter might remember when it went crazy for a few days. Well, as it turns out, the planet Mercury was in retrograde back then (retrograde meaning the time when it appears to be moving backwards from our vantage point on Earth). It seems to be a widely accepted explanation that when things like this happen in cyberspace, poor Mercury frequently gets the blame, especially if it is retrograde. In fact, every time I hear someone going through some sort of communication breakdown, I also hear people asking, “Is Mercury in retrograde again?”

So is there anything to this Mercury stuff, or is it all a story we use to explain away our own frustrations with technology?

Well, this morning I woke up and my coaching website was completely GONE! No website, no email, nadda. I had arranged to have it transferred to a new host, but somehow it got pointed to the wrong nameserver. It took a few hours to sort that out, and when I did, my website was still not online. I couldn’t get through to customer support for the longest time. Then, when I finally did, my cordless phone started to beep and it went dead just as the tech support guy told me the very last thing I needed to know in order to get everything fixed. He told me that my current hosting package was not compatible with the format of my old site, so I ended up having to buy a whole new hosting plan. This meant I had to upload all my files to a new area, which took hours to do. The site was finally restored around 8pm. after about 10 hours of confusion.

In between trying to sort all that out, I was also trying to send out a newsletter via my autoresponder. But for some inexplicable reason, my email delivery programme wouldn’t save anything, and it kept wiping out my newsletter every time I tried to send it. This went on for hours. My newsletter eventually got sent out around 3pm, whereas it should have gone out at 9am.

Hmm… suspicious.

So after all that, I Googled “Mercury in Retrograde 2009” and sure enough, I found out that Mercury went back into retrograde YESTERDAY, and he won’t be turning back around until 29 September.

The coincidence felt pretty convincing, I have to say, but I was still curious to find out more. So I thought I’d have a look at my own astrological birth chart to find out more about the planet’s influence.

In astrology, Mercury is the “ruler” of communications. Hence, it is logical that Mercury is also the “ruler” of our interpersonal communication via the Internet. Mercury is also traditionally known as the “messenger” of the Greek gods, because he transits the most quickly of all the planets across the skies (being the closest to the Sun). He is believed to race through the ether literally at the speed of thought, and thus is able to carry celestial and cerebral messages without the limitations of time and space. This is why, in addition to verbal communication, Mercury is also the ruler of mental swiftness, intellectual abilities and intuition.

In my chart, Mercury is in my 7^th House, which, according to my horoscope programme, means that my chief asset is my “ability to establish contact with other people and communicate with them.” It also says that I am “simply curious about the minds of other people and interested in their thoughts and how they function.” Well, heck, that is absolutely true. My teaching, my coaching, my workshops, my writing (hmm… my Twittering and blogging…) all of these things express my ability to contact and communicate. I think that is why I can have so much fun online, whereas a lot of other professionals I know find it draining.

I kept reading my chart to find out more about Mercury’s influence in my life.

My Mercury is in the same sign as my Sun (Aquarius), which means that I am “a clear thinking person, very open to new and exciting ideas” and that I am possibly “connected with awareness and consciousness” in my professional life.

Wow! That is completely true. I always looking for new and exciting ideas, and everything I do has to do with awareness and consciousness. In fact, the workshop series I am delivering over the coming year (more about these another day) are all aimed at cultivating awareness and consciousness of both Self and environment.

Lastly, I thought I’d look up one more aspect, and found that Mercury had a very strong “trine” (90 degree angle) with Neptune. My programme said that this means:

“You have a very refined mental sensitivity which may be expressed through some form of imaginative and creative work. You possess a wonderful intuition, but formal learning and dry facts do not interest you. You can be quite a perfectionist and are very good at spotting mistakes and errors. You have a talent for creative communication – as a writer, in advertising or the media, or as a general part of your work.” (World of Wisdom, version WOWUSSP2000).

Again… wow indeed! I am a writer, I am in the media (I’m on the radio THREE times tomorrow, in fact), and I actually spend about half my life doing online promotion. Even when I was a musician, I was always the one in charge of communications and promotion. It comes naturally to me. And “dry facts”… puh-leez! I used to rebel in school when the teachers taught by rote. I cannot stand “memorising” things, and “facts” simply go out of my brain (I do still, however, remember birthdays and phone numbers from when I was a kid… go figure).

About the intuition thing, well that is something I have been cultivating more and more over the past few years. I continually reflect back and see how many times in life I underestimated my own intuition and more “mercurial” powers. I think Mercury has become an increasingly powerful paradigm in my life.

Reading all this led me to reflect upon my recent experiences at the One World Festival in Bath last month. When I wasn’t teaching a workshop myself, I was a participant in several interesting workshops. The two most mind-opening (and mind-blowing) were some “Rebirthing” sessions I did, and a short course in palmistry. The Rebirthing course is a whole other story,  so I’ll leave for another day, but the palmistry course was a real eye-opener about the way the body mirrors the inner Self. Little did I know before I took the course that traditional palmistry is based upon the planets and their influences upon us.

AND… you guessed it… Mercury appears again in palmistry. The “pinkie” finger is traditionally called the “Mercury finger” (palmist Johnny Fencham calls it the “Antenna Digit” as it is all about picking up signals from the cosmos). The length of your Mercury finger reflects your intellectual and communication skills, and a collection of vertical lines running upwards beneath it can indicate tendency towards a “healing” profession. While this is a gross over-simplification of the many subtle aspects of this very intricate art, the point is that my own “Mercury Finger” is quite long, and has these “healing lines” beneath it. Again, another Mercury link.

So what is the answer? Is there really a link between my technological toys going crazy today, and Mercury changing its direction just a few hours earlier?

Well, at a completely intuitive level, I’m inclined to say yes.

But then again, being the “open minded” Aquarian that I am, I am ok with not needing a “logical” explanation, and I am fine with all of this not having to make any sense whatsoever. I find there is a beauty to seeing it all as some sort of delightfully random cosmic dance.

Of course, I am quite sure that this perspective might be very irritating to some of my more rational readers in cyberspace. And if that is the case, I think I’ll just blame it on Mercury for now.

…And if tomorrow I end up sending you a blog post that was really meant to go out last week, at least you’ll know why.

nnifareS nnyL–

P.S.:
Please be sure you catch my show “Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul” tomorrow night at 6pm UK/1pm Eastern. My guest is the fabulous Jennifer Louden of Oprah fame. She’s going to tell us all how we can “Have a Blast While Changing the World”. If you miss the show, you can always download the podcast on demand at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Lynn-Serafinn