Are you making these three mistakes on Twitter?

Twitter for business can be an absolute minefield – wasting your time, getting no ROI, damaging your reputation, committing embarrassing faux pas and having staff bludge.

Plus it seems there are three other common mistakes that can prevent you from achieving success on Twitter. Please double check that you’re not a disaster waiting to happen!

1. Blasting your buyers

Every single one of us are ‘buyers’ in some capacity, but when we put on our marketing hat we often totally forget about how we like to buy things ourselves. Rarely do we yearn for a Twitter feed full of spam adverts from companies begging us to buy.

Instead, use Twitter to connect with customers and discover the problems they face.

Tools like Tweepz let you type in keywords and will deliver you a list of all the people on Twitter whose bios match up. For example. ‘Sydney marketing’ delivers results for one of my target markets which is Marketing Managers in Sydney.

Then follow some of these people, listen in, and ask a few questions. Let your competitors damage their reputation by blasting out salesy tweets, while you sit there and build trust!

2. Harassing journalists

Not one journalist I’ve ever met wants more unsolicited and irrelevant press release tweets.

Instead, get to know the reporters that cover your industry. Most people that write for magazines, newspapers and blogs are on Twitter these days and it’s super-easy to follow what they’re up to. Twitter lists let you follow them all so you can see a filtered stream of just these journalists.

This is your perfect opportunity to connect with them, learn what they’re into and discover ways you may be able to help them. Instead of harassing journalists, lead with generosity by commenting on their stories, retweeting them and learning what makes them tick. Then when the time ever comes that they’re actually looking for someone to interview for a story, you might just be the person they call.

3. Tweeting hot air

Of course, 140 characters isn’t much to say anything of substance, so you need some reinforcements. The most successful entrepreneurs on Twitters are using it to guide readers to more information on their blog or website.

Using Twitter without writing a blog is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion. You need to build a foundation of useful articles on your blog and then start tweeting them around.

Sure, one-on-one Twitter conversations are useful, but they’re even more powerful when you can guide people to more information on your blog.

Without a home-base of content, people often perceive you to be running around making a lot of noise, but not having anything of value to say. Of course, I know you’ve got plenty of useful things to say, but how do your buyers?

If you’re interested in learning more, please check out the 42 page eBook I’ve just released called Twitter Tips & Tricks for Business. It’s a free download and has exclusive interviews with Jeff Bullas, Iggy Pintado, Laura Fitton and Kylie Bartlett.