Sherri May & Co.

Twitter has been around for about five years, with a recent surge in popularity the last couple years. When the site first launched, we were a little confused about the value of this social networking tool, but then most of us started to catch on and realize the benefits.

I said most because not everyone has figured out how to use Twitter to its full potential. So if you notice your follower count is starting to dwindle, you might actually be alienating your audience. How can you tell? Check out this recent article by Mashable, it highlights the top 5 sites that let you track your lost followers.

The next step is realizing why you’re losing these followers. Based on my own experience, I’ve put together a few “Twitter Don’ts” that might steer you in the right direction:

Over-Tweeting. Would you email your colleagues 15 times in a row? Would you call your friends 25 times to let them know about upcoming events or great deals? Probably not. Your goal should be to reach out to your followers with valuable content— not to completely bombard them with it.

Solution: Twitter newbies who are developing their follower base should post around 3-5 tweets per day, while established individuals and businesses can post every few hours. But try not to post multiple tweets within an hour.

Exception: If you’re live tweeting updates from a special event, or responding to your followers via @replies, then feel free to tweet away!

Spamming Your Followers. If you’re anything like me, you get excited when you receive a new Direct Message (DM). The fastest way to turn that excitement into frustration is when I realize my new message is just spam. These messages usually follow the same format, “Hey [your user name here], thanks for the follow, do us a favor and check out our [website / Facebook page / blog].” Without establishing any kind of loyalty or trust, your readers might get annoyed when you immediately ask them for a favor.

Solution: Establish a relationship first. You can do that by opening some form of dialogue through @reply messages or by Retweeting their content. Once you’ve established a relationship, your followers will be more inclined to check out your links.

Repetitive Posts. This morning, I unfollowed someone because every post he shared was about Social Media. “Social Media: The Wave of the Future,” “Social Media and You!” “Social Media is the new Social Media.” You get the idea. Repetitive posts that lack diversification can be a good way to bore your followers. They’ll assume you don’t have any fresh content to provide, and they’ll follow people who do.

Solution: Make sure your tweets cover a variety of topics that switch between timely content, replies, Retweets and Direct Messages.