Our New Zealand sister site BusinessBlogs.co.nz got into a spot of trouble with Twitter about 7 days ago.
It seems that Twitter found offense that the ratio of posts containing links was far too high for one of our business profiles and promptly suspended the profile.
The Twitter profile in question is was used to broadcast new posts from one of our major forums so our Twitter community could be alerted to new content.
What we find funny (sad?) is that was the suspended Twitter profile was working exactly like Reuters profile. Of course we are not a billion dollar company but a small business trying to use Twitter to help spread the word.
What we have concluded from this experience is the following:
Customer Service is Overworked
Their customer support took 5 days to respond to our initial request for more information on why we were suspended (yep no warning was given) so do not expect any quick recovery of your suspended profile even if they stuffed up.
Social Media is NOT FREE!!
Do not invest time and resources building up a business focused profile unless you have a backup plan in place. For example sending your fans back to an asset you own such as a blog and get as many of them into your email marketing database as you can so if you are suspended at least you can email them.
Spread the Love
Don’t just focus on one social network – establish a presence in all of the major ones – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Search is NOT DEAD – far from it
Don’t forget search. We have found that people who find us by search will have a higher conversation rate than any visitor from social networks. The answer is simple. When people search they are looking for something in particular. When people click on a link in a social network most of the time they are bored at work and seeking entertainment or distraction. Therefore to convert visitors from social networks into warm prospects requires a different strategy.
Read our original suspended post here: Suspended on Twitter
And the update here: Suspended on Twitter – Businesses Be Very Worried
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I too have suffered the pain of suspension, In my case resolution to longer because Twitter said it was their mistake and I'd got lumped in with some spammers, when nothing happened ie a week. I was then told it was because I was too aggressive with my unfollowing practises. A week later I still hadn't got an adequate explanation why that was the case. Then in week 3 suddenly I was up and running again, no notification or explanation.
From that day on I've operated two twitter accounts, 1 to test new approaches and my main account. My test account (actually its based around gardening) has be suspended twice since then, but it has protected my main account which has continued uninterrupted.
yours
Laurence ainsworth http://twitter.com/laurenceexigent http://twitter.com/UKLAUK
It is sad!! We have to read the paragraphs and paragraphs of fine print a.k.a. “TOS” I suppose. I had a very active cyberlife of facebook, then POOF, it was gone.