Please Don’t Ask Me to do Your Social Media Homework!

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Anita Hovey

Twitter Follower Management appTwitter has phenomenal potential as far as social media for business goes. If you are willing to put in the time to grow a following and cultivate relationships I personally think Twitter is the easiest social network to learn and use. However, there are some things people do that stunt their growth potential and they may not realize just how they are hurting their business.

Recently I’ve started seeing a lot of people who are relying on TrueTwit Validation to “attempt to validate your new followers to see if they are human as opposed to automated bots…[in the hopes that you can] more easily manage your follower list without giving up control.”

It actually sounds kind of good, doesn’t it? Help weeding out the spam bots and fake accounts. Heck, anyone should want that, shouldn’t they? Here are my reasons why you should NOT use TrueTwit if your purposes on Twitter are business-related (I would argue everyone really, but this blog is about social media for business).

You are asking your followers to do more work.

That alone is enough to stop me from signing up. The first time I received the message saying @someperson is using TrueTwit Validation, please click here to prove you’re human I screwed up my nose and thought “Huh? I want to follow you and I have to prove I’m not a bot to do it? That’s just ludicrous.” Needless to say I did not click on the link, did not set up a TrueTwit account and did not “validate” my existence.

I wrongly assumed this meant I was not actually following @someperson at this point. I was so turned off by the message and the implications of it that I didn’t investigate any further that day. More recently, after having received a few more of these messages, and deciding to write this blog post, I thought I should at least go check out the website and see what they’re trying to do. Here’s the skinny:

  • Someone using TrueTwit Validation is not automatically blocking you from following them.
  • The extra steps of getting “validated” allow TrueTwit to inform @someperson that you are human and therefore worthy of a potential followback, which they have the option of automating.
  • The person using TrueTwit has to check out a dashboard to see who has followed them, look at the validations (or lack thereof) and decide who to follow back.


    • Saving time is as easy as a click on Twitter

    The claims from TrueTwit are that it will save you time and lessen your Twitter spam. Honestly I think you could save more time and gain more followers by learning how to use Twitter features properly.

    Want to see if an account is a spam bot? Simply click on the account profile and read the tweets. It’s pretty easy to tell if they’re a real person or not. Want to lessen the amount of Twitter spam? Report accounts that spam you and boom, they’re gone. Easy. Peasy. And no extra account to set up, no dashboard to check out. Even better, no annoying direct message back to your new follower asking them to do your homework for you.

    Have you tried TrueTwit? Am I missing something here? I would love to know if you think this is a truly valuable app that I’m not understanding.

     

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    About Anita Hovey

    Anita Hovey is the Head Twirp at Twirp Communications in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She provides social media training for business, including social media workshops and personalized training, and full-service social media management. Her specialty is women-focused organizations and women-owned businesses. Whether you need strategic online marketing advice, private training or someone to “just do it” for you, there’s a Twirp for that. Check out Anita on Google+.
    This entry was posted in Apps, Twitter and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
    • http://bitesizedtravel.wordpress.com/ Krista

      Preach! Using TrueTwit seems lazy on the part of the user and onerous for the follower. When I first encountered it, I assumed it to be a phishing thing and ignored it anyway.

      • Anita

        HA! There’s where I got the word “onerous”… I used it yesterday and thought it just came to me out of the blue! You’re right Krista, it appears lazy…because people do not take the time to go read what it’s all about. First impressions are everything sometimes.

    • http://twitter.com/DaleyProgress Daley Progress

      Excellent post! When I first started on Twitter, I was following everyone back willy nilly. Then I got the guy that offered to do something naughty (not sure how he would have accomplished it online). Since then I simply click through to view the profile and recent tweets before I follow. Annoying people who obviously want to follow you is not a good deal. (Dare I compare it to a double opt-in sign up for newsletters? ;)

      • Anita

        The double-opt-ins are sometimes annoying, but they are becoming the standard, aren’t they? At least you know the person doing the DOI really wants your info.

    • http://www.facebook.com/HfxNetworker Derek Kaye

      I see it all the time but have yet to ‘validate’ myself… a waste of my time as far as I’m concerned!

      D.

      • http://www.twirp.ca Anita Hovey

        Thanks for the comment Derek…glad I’m not the only one.

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