“Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation” was first reported by the LA Times and it discusses what I believe to be a fairly common practice amongst social marketers — “deploying a large number of Twitter accounts to push out identical messages “.
From the LA Times article: “In posts reviewed by The Times, organizers often used identical text, images, links and hashtags . . . ”
There are many different ‘advocacy’ software tools that make it super easy for social marketers to get a bunch of people to share the same content (e.g., a blog post) across multiple social channels including Twitter. When used responsibly and strategically, these tools are highly effective.
But those who use advocacy software need to be aware of the dangers of posting duplicate messages across multiple Twitter accounts and these other no no’s described in this Twitter policy.
We’re quite familiar with these policies because our Advos software platform includes advocacy and collaboration tools that make it super easy to get your team members involved in promoting your brand, company and content on their social media accounts. The benefits are real: amplified reach, increased clicks, higher engagement, even enhanced credibility.
But without proper training and education, advocacy programs can backfire, or worse, get you and/or your advocates suspended by Twitter.
This is one reason we require users to type their own messages when sharing content through Advos, and why we make it impossible to publish tweets to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. It may take someone an extra 10-20 seconds to compose their own original tweet(s) but trust me, it’s more effective (and won’t get you in trouble). It’s also a good idea to use different images and hashtags when scheduling multiple tweets that point to the same article.
Check out these Best Practices for Starting an Advocacy Program.
