Dear Mr Jack Dorsey

Dear Mr Jack Dorsey
please restore my twitter account
i am in the media and this is my work
i know they are rules to follow but what makes this so unjust is
all my work is in on that twitter page
i have many congress man as my friends and allso many news reporters
 using Twitter for your business,
costing me money this is unfair

Twitter Account Suspension and Lawsuits Tied to Automation Tools

· 8 Comments

Twitter account suspension

is often linked to the use of automation, and in particular, tools used for rapid growth of Twitter accounts and spamming.
And as Twitter has over 140 million active users, and more than 340 million Tweets daily, it is a power to be reckoned with, and expects as much respect as Google and Facebook.
And as of the end of the first week in April 2012, Twitter has launched a lawsuit for over $700,000 against the makers of automated Twitter software, principle defendants being named as Skootle Corporation (particularly James Kester), JL4 Web Solutions (naming Jayson Yanuaria), Justin Clark (with TweetBuddy.com), and spammers James Lucero, and Garland E. Harris (for violating Twitter™s terms of service that ban users from Spam and Abuse.).
TweetAttacks has completely removed their entire website, and TweetAdder’s account has been suspended by Twitter (see http://twitter.com/tweetadder).
As was stated by Twitter in a blog post, “By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal., and as an added measure, “our engineers launched new anti-spam measures within Twitter to more aggressively suspend a new type of @ mention spam“.
Although you may not be in immediate danger of a twitter account suspension you may want to take heed here, it could be coming….

Avoid Your Twitter Account Suspension!

TweetAddr is a popular automation tool (one I’ve used myself but not for it’s most common use – spamming), and it’s site is still up.
But I would no longer recommend you buy or use it, even though I have my own affiliate link for it.
This is the one constant in internet marketing…..
…..things are constantly changing!
So we adapt and adjust, as any serious business owner learns to do.
As my own Twitter account suspension was based on the use of an application which automatically re-Tweeted another user’s affiliate link, I was able to quickly rectify the situation and rescue my account which at that time had well over 26,000 followers accumulated in a bit over 2 years.
It was a frightening and rude awakening, but I learned a lot, as you can read in that post.
And you can learn how to avoid your own twitter account suspension.

Good Practice will Save You from a Twitter Account Suspension

For now it is advisable that if you are using the automated tools in Twitter’s lawsuit to build your Twitter accounts and send out automated tweets that you stop entirely, or do so with extreme caution.
As Twitter’s Automation Rules and Best Practices states, “If an application has OAuth approval, the following will be true

1. You allow the application access by approving their connection, not by giving out your username and password.
2. Once approved, you’ll be able to see and revoke the connection from your Applications tab.”

I do still use SocialOomph, a tool which DOES appear in the Applications Tab, and for which you must grant access.
And although I do use it for scheduled updates, and repeatedly Tweet out the same content, the frequency has been greatly reduced as are the number of affiliate products I promote using it.
A better approach would be to write a website or blog post recommending your product, and Tweet out the link to that post or web page. This can be done with a variety of text / headlines and links (using various spinners).
If you need help setting up a blog in less than 40 minutes, this simple internet marketing blueprint will show you how.
Given a large number of Tweets that provide value, along with a widely dispersed un-matching set of product Tweets you might be o.k., but I would definitely tread with caution!
And to make money online without depending on uncontrollable services like Twitter, this DotComSecretsRoadmap is a system you really should take a quick look at, it will cost you nothing to do so!

Categories: Social Media - Tags: twitter account suspension

About Vicki

I'm a Network Marketing Professional as well as a software engineer. Read more about me on my 'About Me' page and >>>>>>> Check out this overview to see what will soon exceed my income beyond the one I am currently making in engineering! View all posts by Vicki »

My Twitter Account Suspension; What You Need to Do to Keep This From Happening to You

· 55 Comments

Panic! My Twitter Account Suspension Story

First, if you are here looking for information regarding the recent news of lawsuits and account suspensions related to TweetAddr and other Twitter automation tools, be sure to continue reading THIS article, because it’s information is HIGHLY relevant to your Twitter account sustainability!
I have had my Twitter account now for almost two and a half years, and with an effort since the first day toward providing as much value as I could, I have gained 27,488 followers, and as a result, many solid relationships, customers, and business partners.
I am careful to tweet out 95% content, inspirational quotes, plenty of reTweets, and conversation, and only rarely ever just an affiliate link.
So it was with shock and dismay that I discovered my Twitter account suspension the other day.
There was a time about a year and a half ago, along with thousands of others, that my account was suspended due to bot attacks at Twitter. But that case was different. I knew it was only temporary, and I was in good company, with some very well known Twitter accounts in the mix.
But stopping by as I do every few days to check on my account, I was shocked to see the little pink bar across my Twitter profile saying my account had been suspended….
This time I was a bit more worried, since I had not been able to find any news of mass suspensions in the first few minutes.
What could have happened? I don’t depend on Twitter for traffic as much as I had in the beginning, but certainly I was ill prepared to deal with the loss of so many great followers by a Twitter account suspension!

Twitter Account Suspension is Based on Some (Even Obscure) Rules

I had knowledge of the basic Twitter Account Rules of which some are obvious, such as you should not follow large amount of users in a short amount of time.
And, as one might expect, if a large number of people are blocking you, you may also incur a Twitter account suspension.
You should DEFINITELY read these rules from top to bottom if you plan on investing time in your Twittering, to be sure that you understand them, and that your efforts with using Twitter aren’t lost on a Twitter account suspension.
But, there are some rules that I did NOT know existed, until I got the email back from Twitter upon my submitting my query concerning my Twitter account suspension.
This was what ‘theCaptain’ told me in the reply I received:

“Your account was suspended for violations of the Twitter Rules:

http://twitter.com/rules

It appears you might have signed up for some third-party services which are posting affiliate links through your account. The Automation Rules & Best Practices page has more information about our policies surrounding affiliate advertising:

http://support.twitter.com/entries/76915

I have un-suspended your account now. Please take the following actions to revoke access to any third-parties that may be causing your account to violate the Twitter Rules:

• Check your Applications tab at http://twitter.com/settings/applications and revoke the access privileges of any third party applications that are posting violating updates to your accounts.”

Well first of all, I had never seen these rules on Twitter Automation and Affiliate links! I don’t even know where I would find them from the first rules page as there is no apparent link or header from there.
But it sure does shed light on my issues.
First, I did have several third party applications which allowed posts to my account. Services such as “Triberr” (a free Twitter content syndication tribe), posted content on behalf of other people automatically.
I had had reservations about Triberr in the past because I could not know how that tribe would grow, who would end up in it (although it is invitation only), and what they might be posting. But I hadn’t thought to actively cancel it.
But on receiving this email, I revoked access for almost everything that had write access to my Twitter account, including these services.
Although I had never set up auto-syndication of my Twitter account for OnlyWire. or for TribePro as well, for the same reasons, I did not have control over what others might submit, and my Twitter account is important to my business. I want to protect my followers from spam as much as I can.
But there was still one caveat that I was missing, which I didn’t discover that until I had completed a thorough investigation of everything leading up to the time of my Twitter account suspension.

Make Sure You Avoid Twitter Account Suspension

Since I was also aware that part of the Twitter policies are not to use repeated Tweets, and I do use TweetAddr to schedule my tweets, I did re-examine my frequency and my content.
And have stopped using it completely as of today, with the news of lawsuits and account suspensions related to this and other similar Twitter automation tools.
I have so many tweets, that I believed any repeated posts would not be close enough in time to cause my Twitter account suspension; a repeat would be unlikely within a span of several days.  I read through every post in my list of over 200, although I was somewhat distracted at the time, someone had called…..
So just after re-instating the automated Tweet function in TweetAddr, I did one last check; a close examination of my last tweet prior to my Twitter account suspension
It was here that I believe I finally hit upon the culprit, only apparent to me after having read the obscure Affiliate section of the Twitter rules.
My last tweet prior to my suspension was to a bit.ly shortened affiliate link of my own, from Clickbank.
This type of link shortening is never recommended, and it was one I had overlooked since I’d stopped using them over a year and a half ago.
When you shorten a Clickbank or similar affiliate link with bit.ly, you get a spam warning when you click on it.
I think it is likely that this could have been what triggered my Twitter account suspension! I had long overlooked this remaining bit.ly shortened affiliate link, and this can easily be picked up by Twitter’s account management bots.
So as of my resulting re-examination of my tweets going out, I realized I had even personally violated the Twitter Affiliate link rules. However, I’m not sure it was as much the automation as the masking of this link causing it to appear as ‘Spam’.

Lessons Learned About Twitter Account Suspension

Aside from carefully reading ALL of the rules to avoid Twitter account suspension. But in particular,

• Do Not use link shorteners to mask affiliate links

• Do Not allow third party applications access to your Twitter account, especially for automated posting services who will submit posts by other people (you can bet on their sending out affiliate links!)

And one more thing – DO NOT BE FOOLED by this common spam known to trick users into THINKING their account has been suspended to get you to click on a link :

from support@twitter.com support@twitter.com subject Your account has been suspended

Your account has been suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service….

Your account was suspended for aggressive tweeting and following..

Following large numbers of users and tweeting too much in an attempt to attract attention…..

to your own account can be annoying to other users and is a violation of the Twitter Rules….

To avoid permanent suspension complete our free offers below.

Click here to complete some offers …..  <<<—- floating your mouse over what WAS a link
revealed it to be a NON twitter URL. I marked it
as spam after visiting my Twitter account which was fine!

If you are serious about using Twitter for your business, consider these rules carefully so you do not also have to suffer a Twitter account suspension too!

Categories: Social Media - Tags: twitter account suspension

Using Twitter for Business; Be a Tweet Peep, Not a Twit

· 25 Comments

Using Twitter for Business

If you haven’t been using Twitter for business purposes, then you may be wonder if you are missing out.
Or maybe you have you set up a Twitter account, found out how to accumulate mass numbers off followers, and maybe trying to monetize these followers?
Are you out there promoting your business In Spades and getting Nothing but Jokers?
Feel like you may as well be Quacking like a Duck?
Most of you who have been using Twitter for business probably don’t have this problem.
But I am still amazed at how much spam is out there.
Do these folks really think that works? I would think so only for someone even more naive than the spammer themselves.
Using Twitter for business can be profitable, but it still boils down to building know, like and trust, and creating relationships with your target market.
So if you want to use Twitter as a part of your marketing arsenal, then start by using it wisely.
If you think it’s all about the number of followers you have, then think again.
Sure, numbers can be powerful but there are some considerations if we’re talking about Twitter for business.
Out of thousands of followers, how many will be in your target market?
How many actually see your links? Or follow your links?
How many are you really connecting with?

Twitter for Business; Think before you Tweet

If you are a Twitterer with no measurable results, remember that as with any social media venue, it’s about relationships.
Especially when using Twitter for business!
Twitter can in fact provide a great venue not only for driving traffic, but yes, even for building relationships and ultimately finding customers and business partners.
This might seem surprising, because of the casual, non-committal nature of Twitter posts, with the limit of 140 characters. Being less cumbersome, they may seem to carry less social weight than say posts on Facebook.
Which is why I think people seem to more easily spam their audiences there. But this is where it fails them.
They think using Twitter for business means putting your links out 24/7!
But real relationships are possible using Twitter, ones that build slowly over time as with any other network and even in real life.
I’ve been amazed at some of the valuable relationships I have built directly from Twitter.
And truthfully, this stuff is really easy but takes a small daily time commitment, so that you are consistent. Just beware the social media vortex!
Twitter for Business Requires Your Flock of Followers
1) Get an Account
First of all, If you have not created a Twitter account.
Use YOUR picture, not a picture of your dog, a logo, or a cartoon character! And if you have a banner reflecting your personal brand, all the better.
It’s not only about building relationships here, but branding yourself and building your presence (your Twitter page will appear on a Google search of your name).
Be sure to use keywords in your profile description, especially important in using Twitter for business. And be sure to put a link to your blog, opt-in page or sales funnel.
2) Build Your Following
One option is to manually follow people who follow your friends, but more importantly in using Twitter for business is that you follow people who follow well known people in your target market.
You can also use free tools like Twollow.com, Twollo.com. and SocialOomph.com. These can make building a following pretty simple (Twollow and Twollo let you set up auto-following based on keywords, but the free versions limit you to using only 5 and 2 keyword phrases, respectively). SocialOomph has a paid version (it may now require paid to do auto-follow? but check it out!)
A great way to build a following is to use TweetAddr which can automate the process as well, and steadily grow your following based on targeted keywords. This software has a one time fee and will save you paying monthly for similar services.
Just be careful not to follow too aggressively at first, for Twitter will nix your account. There is a ratio it watches for, you cannot follow more than something like 1/10 over your current number of followers.  And follow back your followers (after checking them out)!
If you are roadblocked at the 1000 or 2000 mark and can’t follow more, this is bad for using Twitter for business. So unfollow people that are not following you back and you’ll be able to follow more people. You can use Tweepi.com to do this for free.

Twitter for Business Still Requires Twitter Ediquette

Give Them Something to Tweet About!
Tweet (do a status update) at least once or twice a day. As you build a large following you will want to increase this, as only a small portion will be likely to see your Tweet at the time you Tweet it.
Your Tweets should be pleasant, responsive, consistent,uplifting, entertaining and/or educational.
And specifically in using Twitter for business, you want to provide value that will solve problems for your target market.
Always provide value (content) primarily, not spam! An occasional tweet directly to your opt-in page is fine as long as that is not ALL that you do.
ReTweet (RT) content that you appreciate! If you are getting lots of RTs on your content then you know you are on the right track!
Thank your followers who RT’ed your Tweets (These are found in your @Replies view). This is very important especially for content that you have written or even RTs of your products or opt-in Tweets! And, be SURE you are following them!
Also in your @Replies view are messages that are directed personally to you as well as recommendations for you – reply to as many of these as you can!
Watch your DMs for any personal messages. This may mean sifting through lots of spam. DO NOT follow links here, this is where many Twitter viruses have been and still are propagated!
Twitter Tips and Tools
1) Twitter Lists – There are now Lists that you can create with your followers categorized to help you keep up with your favorite people.
You can learn more about your target market, especially important for using Twitter for business. You can learn what they’re Tweeting about, and what their problems and desires are.
You can even search on Search.Twitter.com for keywords that might afford you an opportunity to offer your solution.
2) Automation – Service like SocialOoomph.com does a lot for free, allowing you to auto-follow-back and schedule Tweets ahead of time. You can also use software such as TweetAddr to do the same thing and more, such as recurring scheduled tweets, for which SocialOomph charges monthly.
Using Twitter for business makes this all the more important as you will definitely want to maximize your return on investment.
3) Tagging and Searching Content – #HashTags are useful as a  search tool,  even in tracking live conversations. Some people use it to brand their own stream (e.g. #VOSS). #Quote is very common and you can find great quotes this way.
One of the most popular #Hashtags is #FollowFriday which is used to recommend your favorite Tweeters on Friday – just be sure to thank anyone who recommends you!
But tags that might be specific to your target market, such as #weightloss, #attractionmarketing, etc., are very useful for using Twitter for business.
Use Search.Twitter.com to find any topic in Twitter real time. This is useful if you want to provide an immediate solution to a problem in your target market!
4) Measuring Effectiveness – If you are curious as to how much your Tweeted links are followed, use a URL tracker such as bit.ly (create a free account there). You can also test various headlines this way (best if they’re around the same time of day).
This is particularly important if you are using Twitter for business!
TwitterGrader.com will rank you on how you are doing with your updates and content (taking into account for example the number of RTs you give and receive).
MrTweet.com allows you to recommend someone giving them accolades for ‘the record’. Again, building relationships is crucial for any business and so using Twitter for business is in this way no different!
5) Productivity Tools – Too many Twitter tools and tips exist to cover, but ne of the most popular ones is Tweetdeck, with multiple columns allowing you to view separate streams easily. You can create groups of different people you follow, so you can separate business partners, clients, and just friends. It also allows updates to synchronize with Facebook, and has a built in search.
Mashable.com is one of the best sites for up-to-date info on Twitter, Twitter tools, and Social Media in general.
Help.Twitter.com is a good place for FAQs and Tips, and a search in Google will yield tons of Twitter help.
I hope this has helped you decide that  is is possible to be effective in using Twitter for business, so Follow me on Twitter and Happy Tweeting!