SIMPLE WAYS TO AVOID GETTING SUSPENDED
A Guest Blog Post By Indra Chandon
Every time any social media platform runs a campaign to clear out fake accounts people complain about loss of followers and the social media companies remind us of their Terms of Service.
Sometimes it can be the only time you think about taking a look at the Terms of Service.
It can be a surprise when we actually find out what they mean for the campaigns and social media marketing strategies you’re running.
With Twitter actively clearing out fake accounts (and deleting ‘deck’ accounts recently), the usual notifications about the Terms of Service have lots of people complaining.
Before you join those angry voices, here’s the lowdown.
What you have agreed to abide by just by having a Twitter account:
(A) The images you use for your profile, header, background and posts don’t infringe on anyone else’s copyright.
- That means you can’t use images of famous people without their permission.
- You can’t use a logo or trademark that you don’t own.
- If you have created your own image you can’t have copied it from somewhere else.
- Grabbing images from the internet without checking the licensing will also get you in trouble.
(B) If you have more than one Twitter account it’s wrong to publish an identical post at the same time to all the accounts you have.
- While tools like Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Buffer, SocialPilot etc, allow it. You are not supposed to be doing it.
- Twitter wants you to post unique content to every single one of your accounts.
(C) You must not use scheduling automation to allow posting of identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts at the same time.
- Again, even though tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, SocialPilot and others, allow it, you’re not supposed to do it.
- TweetDeck has already begun to change its system to stop users from doing this.
(D When you have more than one Twitter account, you must not have all your accounts coordinate to Follow, Like or Retweet the same other Twitter account(s).
- This is a ‘black hat’ tactic used by ‘deck’ accounts that control thousands of fake accounts.
- This tactic is responsible for the spread of abuse, harassment, misinformation and fake news.
(E) It is prohibited to coordinate activity across multiple accounts to simultaneously post Tweets with a specific hashtag.
- Especially with the aim of forcing a desired topic to trend.
- This is another ‘black hat’ tactic being used to mass manipulate people on a large scale.
(F) You must not falsify verification of your Twitter account.
- That means you must not artificially add the blue verification icon, Twitter awards to some accounts, on your account profile.
- Twitter has ‘zero tolerance’ on this and will delete the account as soon as they discover it.
It’s easy to think of the Terms of Service as something bad or some how designed to keep you from achieving great results but there are some tremendous advantages.
Why doing the right thing on Twitter is great for you.
(1) Well first, you’re not going to get your account deleted without notice.
If you’re a serious social media marketer, it should matter to you.
After all that hard work of building up your audience.
Loosing it overnight just because you didn’t pay attention to the fine print would be devastating.
(2) Making Twitter a more balanced environment means you get to have real connections with others.
This will allow you to have real and trustworthy connections with others.
Your communications about things that are important to you can then be genuine.
Spammers and criminals have been masquerading as everyday people on social media for a while, causing lots of problems for the rest of us.
Doing things like starting flame wars and scamming people for their identity details.
Bullying good people into being silent when bad things happen.
(3) Counterfeiters have been profiting in social media for quite a while.
Everything from selling copy and fake luxury goods to sending traffic to fake storefronts.
These are the people that take your money and never deliver.
Without these guys creating distrust, your offers get a better chance of converting.
(4) Having unique content published to each of your Twitter accounts, gives you more channels to promote through.
Think of it like the segmentation you do with emails.
It’s like having different TV channels that you can control however you want.
(5) Stopping copyright infringement with images means that Twitter will now help you stop people from using your images without your permission.
So if, for example, you make custom design wrought iron gates and share pics of them.
Then keep seeing other people using your photos to sell some other business, you’ll now get help in shutting that down.
In our view, Twitter continues to be a great social media platform for individuals who want to create their own ‘tribe’ as well as businesses that want more reach and brand recognition.
SIMPLE WAYS TO AVOID GETTING SUSPENDED ON TWITTER
MEET INDRA CHANDON
