Social Me-Duh! Part 2: How Tweeting About Meteors Got My Twitter Account Suspended…Twice

Look up in the sky…is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No…it’s just Noel getting banned from another social media platform…

Yep.  Twitter account was suspended TWICE.  Both times had absolutely nothing to do with promoting the apps. I was posting about METEORS for crying out loud!!! But I still managed to screw up my social media efforts.

When I first started tweeting about the apps I created a new account @learnphotoapps as I figured it would be better to separate personal and apps. Put a nice icon of the app as the profile picture, and started some tweetin’ and a followin’.
And quickly hit the “Hey, we noticed you are following a lot of people…slow down!” warning.

After I consulted people who know social media (yeah, I do things backwards), they told me the key to Twitter is not to spam people with my products, but instead start or take part in conversations.  Be helpful. Offer advice. Be a ‘caped crusader’ roaming the net helping those in need. Make my knowledge, experience, and all around niceness the brand. That will gain me followers, who will eventually see that I have apps and check them out.

Seems pretty straight forward! So I switched my name to Noel Chenier, and put my ugly mug as my profile shot.

But of course, there is always a way to do it wrong. Which means I most likely will do it.

I already have a photo tips blog, and had just posted about how to photograph the upcoming Leonid meteor shower…so I put on my cape and looked for anyone tweeting about the how to photograph them!
I searched tweets for “meteor”, “meteor shower”, etc. Photographers, astronomers, weather forecasters, teens…they were all mentioning them, so I thought I’d tweet them a link to the blogpost:

“If you were hoping to get great photos of the meteor shower, here’s some tips on my blog: http://noelchenier.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-annual-leonid-meteor-shower-is.html”

Started to get lots of retweets, mentions, replies…no one called me a spammer.  “This is great!” I thought…”I’m doing it. I’m succeeding at social media finally!!!”

My first warning that maybe I should slow down was a message from Twitter telling me that maybe I should slow down…but of course I didn’t listen…I’m SuperNoel!

Then I got the “YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED”

Oops.

So I emailed the appeal centre, apologized and explained what I was doing, and got my account re-enabled.

So in the end, I managed to get over 3,000 hits to the blog post…and downloads of the app over that time period? Steady decline.

A month later, the Geminids meteor shower arrives, with an updated blog post. Not going to make the same mistake again!
This time, I was going to space out the time between tweets. I was going to not just copy and paste, I was going to mix it up.

And…..SUSPENDED again.

All because someone didn’t actually appreciate my tips and reported me.
So again, appealed, explained, and go my account re-enabled…with a warning that next time might be for good.

This blog post got double the hits of the last one, over 6000!

App downloads?

Went DOWN over that time period.

Sigh.

So am I done being helpful?  Of course not.  Just going to be more careful next time!

Lessons learned from this:
1) Go easy on the COPY AND PASTE.
2) Space out your tweets
3) Don’t tweet everyone just cause they mention apps, or whatever help you are trying to give. Some people won’t appreciate it. Only post if people ASK for help…
4) Just because you put on a cape, it doesn’t mean you are super…or can fly.

ONE YEAR LATER

Happy to report that I have tweeted two more times since this original post about meters, and haven’t been suspended or banned! And yet again, downloads didn’t really go up much. I did however see that a company who had launched an app had the same thing happen to them recently. Should have read my blog!
One of thing I will recommend you do is use Twitter lists. It’s a good way to not only break up your followers into groups, but you can actually put people on lists WITHOUT having to follow them. FYI, there is a limit to how many people you can follow in relation to your follower count. For example, I’ve got less than a thousand followers and therefore can only follow 2,000. I’ve actually hit my limit and had to start unfollowing people and moving them to lists. So I’ve got lists for tech writers, photographers, etc. And sometime when you put someone on a list they might actually check out your profile (and hopefully check out your app!) 

BTW, if you are interested in learning how to photograph meteors, here you go. Oh, and if you’d like to follow me on twitter, I’m @noelchenier

Noel

PS-Help out a fellow developer!  Download the free versions of my Photography Assignment Generator Apps and let me know what you think!
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