How to use Twitter and not get slapped on Twitter!

Did you know that you could get in trouble for doing things like following too many people in a day, using auto-following too often, and having “objectionable” tweets? Twitter is increasingly cracking down on Tweeps (that’s Twitter people) who only use Twitter to send spam.

It’s called getting “Twitter Slapped” and it’s the last thing you want to happen to your account. A “Twitter slap” is when Twitter suspends your account for a week (or more) because it deems your account spam or questionable if a human is using it or if it’s a bot running the program.

This is how to NOT get slapped on Twitter, and then I’ll tell you how to get your account back.

1) Don’t follow too many people in one day using autofollow. You must manually follow your followers or find them yourself using the search functions. Many programs offer automatic tracking, through keyword or bulk tracking programs. You can safely follow people en masse through sites like Tweepular. But those people may not be interested in your type of tweets. Stick to the manual.

2) You can use a service to unfollow people who aren’t following you back (called “Tweepular”), but use this tool every few days. People unfollowing en masse so you can follow more people will send a red flag to Twitter. You can safely unfollow a few each day if you need to clean up your list, but do it manually.

3) You can set up a service for Auto-Tweet or Tweet Later, but don’t use it exclusively. You must tweet yourself several times a day. Twitter knows when you’re using a program to send automated tweets. If you do something to use automatic tweets, space out the tweets sporadically.

Of course you can do all these things and you may or may not get slapped on Twitter, but if you do… it will take over a week to get it back. It will take you to email Twitter support several times and then they will contact you and reactivate you. You may not get it back at all, but I’ve seen Twitter go very nice to this and basically slap someone on the wrist, telling them not to do it again.

If Twitter doesn’t respond to you after your first attempt to contact them, keep it up! In fact, I ended up sending 20 emails over the course of 3 days telling them to reset my account. Yes, that’s right, I got slapped on Twitter!

Remember…follow the simple tips above and you will avoid experiencing the same frustrations I experienced.