How To Completely Fail On Twitter

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Want to gain a lot of followers and get people talking about you on Twitter? If so, then leave this page immediately. Most of the social marketing content on the Internet helps you succeed… this tutorial is for those who wish epitomize the Twitter Fail Whale.

If you want to watch your Twitter account die a quick death, then keep reading (Psst … looking for how NOT to fail on Twitter? Read this, this and this.)

#Fail Step 1: Use a long twitter handle/username
When you make your Twitter account, make sure your username is longer than 15 characters. Your username is what follows the ‘@’ symbol. For instance, methodshop’s is @methodshop. To completely fail with your username on Twitter, you want it to be so long that no one will remember it or have enough room in their tweets to mention you.

How will a short Twitter username help?

a. People won’t remember it. The first step towards failure – no recall. Hooray!
b. You will have less than 125 characters in your tweet. Tough!
c. Other tweeps will not be able to retweet you, especially if they want to mention their comments along with the RT. (Read all about retweets here: What is Retweeting?)

#Fail Step 2: I, Me, My, Our, We…
Who cares about everyone else? The only person in the world who matters is you! When you walk into a party, what does everyone else want to talk about? That’s right, you! Everything you say and all your tweets should be about yourself. Tweet about what you had for breakfast, how you still pick your nose, your dead cat, what color socks you are about to wear.

How will talking to other people help you on Twitter?

Social media is all about conversations. In any world, real or virtual, people and businesses that only talk about themselves, are considered self-centered and are tagged, bad conversationalists. Tweeps will unfollow you in a hurry if they think you are one. Let the self-references flow!

#Fail Step 3: Tweet when your followers are offline
Go to a free Tweet time analyzer, such as Tweroid or Social Bro. These applications will analyze both your tweets and your followers, and give you your ‘best times to tweet’. This is when most of your followers are online.

And because you want to fail on Twitter, never tweet when your followers are offline and can’t see your tweets. Try tweeting in the middle of the night when your followers are asleep.

How will optimizing your tweet times help?
Tweeting when there are no followers online = no retweets = no exposure = slow and painful Twitter death. Plan and schedule your tweets at times when they will get the most impact.

#Fail Step 4: Keep up a monologue
Do not, under any circumstance, reply to or retweet another tweep’s tweets. Just keep up a constant barrage of your self-reference tweets and your #fail goal will be within reach. If someone replies to or retweets one of your tweets, ignore. And, don’t read this article: Study reveals formula for the perfect tweet.

How will having a conversation help?
a. When potential followers see your monologue that carries no reference to any other tweep, they will runaway away as fast as possible.
b. When your current followers receive no response from you, they will happily click the unfollow button.

#Fail Step 5: Do not follow anyone from your country or region
Avoid following anyone local or anyone who you might have regional similarities with. Individuals should not follow anyone from their country and businesses should refrain from following Twitter users from their target market.

How will following your target audiences help?
If you don’t follow anyone from your country, you will, generally, not understand what their tweets refer to. Most of your tweets, similarly, will not find any resonance with your followers. For example, people in Spain won’t understand what American’s tweeting about #AmericanIdol are talking about, because they can’t watch the show. So if you avoid people who have geo-location commonalities with you, then a lot of #fail will happen. Yes!

That’s it! If you want to be a failure on Twitter, then these 5 steps should be more than enough to send you spiraling down the big dark hole of Social Media failure . On the other hand… if you want to succeed, then you know what NOT to do. Good luck!