I know many of you noticed that my Twitter account (@WebTrafficCafe) has been suspended for a while now; since November 22, to be more precise.
Considering Twitter traffic is my largest referral traffic source, it was quite a hit.
I’ve gotten many emails asking if I knew why it was suspended and what to do to avoid the same fate.
It took 4 emails to Twitter support, multiple tweets to their support account, and almost 3 weeks, and FINALLY I heard a voice from the Twitter black hole that said:
Hi,
The following behaviors are violations of the Twitter Rules:
• Creating serial and/or multiple accounts with overlapping use cases
• Cross-posting Tweets or links across accounts
• Aggressive following, particularly through automated meansAs such, these accounts will remain suspended.
Let’s take a look at these reasons a bit closer to see what we can learn.
Multiple Accounts with OVERLAPPING Use Cases
“Creating serial and/or multiple accounts with overlapping use cases”
“Overlapping use cases“?
As in actually tweeting through all of them???
It’s no secret that I am very much into getting in touch with as many people on Twitter as possible with the sole goal to bring them back to my blog where I can build relationships with them.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t talk to my followers on Twitter. I do.
However, I prefer to do it right here, at TGC.
That’s why I had several Twitter accounts set up (which is not against Twitter TOS), that represented my different interests (being a Mom, a Christian, a fan of travel, TGC owner) and yes, they all had an internet marketing twist to them.
I fed those accounts with relevant to that specific group of people information. For instance, for my @SuitcaseCafe, I had several great travel blogs that fed it with great travel tips through Twitterfeed.com.
TAKEAWAY:
When setting up multiple Twitter accounts, make sure the themes and the information you tweet vary substantially.
Cross Posting Across Multiple Accounts
Sounds like they don’t want us to post the same tweet in multiple accounts.
Does that include retweeting something?
I am confused about this one (and yes, very mad).
So I can’t post the same tweet across multiple accounts and I can’t RT anything between accounts because it would be considered cross-linking?
Aggressive Following
I’ve been using TweetAdder to help me automate some of the tedious Twitter tasks, like searching for potential followers, following them, unfollowing the ones who didn’t seem to be interested in what I had to say.
I also stick to the same following/unfollowing schedule that I’ve established since I first started on Twitter almost 2 years ago.
PLUS, I never even used TweetAdder on 2 of my accounts – everything I did there was manual. Yet, they got suspended anyway.
The only difference that might’ve triggered this whole “Ana Hoffman Twitter Ban” was the fact that I decided to try out TweetAdder automatic features (which I’ve never used up to that day), didn’t think they were beneficial, and stopped using them after a day.
Will I stop using TweetAdder? Not a chance.
But I won’t use their automation features ever again. Just in case.
I actually wrote a full TweetAdder review that will be publish shortly, where I’ll go over how I use it to stay on the good side of Twitter and save a lot of time while at it.
One More Guess
As I already mentioned, I wasn’t using TweetAdder on all the accounts that were suspended.
However, I WAS using something to help me keep track of all of them and the only Twitter account that was NOT suspended, was the one that I forgot to add to this platform.
MarketMeSuite.
I don’t really know if it had anything to do with MMS in particular or the same thing would’ve happened no matter which social media management platform I was using, like Hootsuite, etc. – maybe it was about how I was using it and not the platform itself.
That was the ONLY thing that connected all those accounts though.
Marketing Takeaway
So what did we learn from this?
The fact that Twitter could be as capricious as Google and can bend their TOS whichever way they’d like to.
As much as I disagree with them (naturally), I know that it would be a waste of time to argue with them. All they have to do is simply ignore me, like they successfully have in the past three weeks.
With that said, I am starting anew.
Today is the first day of my new Twitter account @AnaTrafficCafe and it feels like it’s my first day at school – no one wants to talk to the new kid on the block.
I suggest we change that; what do you say?
I’d appreciate if you could help me to get my new account off the ground by following me and sending this tweet to your followers:
Let’s make some noise at Ana Hoffman’s new account @AnaTrafficCafe; follow her and RT, please!
Look forward to getting connected!
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