New rules on Twitter, aimed squarely at limiting abuse and large-scale tweeting and retweeting of the same content, are now in force and could impact ecommerce merchants who use the social media platform to promote their goods for sale.
Specifically, the new rules relate to multiple accounts. They prohibit the same or similar content being posted by multiple Twitter accounts. You can read the full detail here. And the exact rules states:
– Do not (and do not allow your users to) simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts. For example, your service should not permit a user to select several accounts they control from which to publish a given Tweet.
– This applies regardless of whether the Tweets are published to Twitter at the same time, or are scheduled/queued for future publication.
– As an alternative to posting identical content, you can Retweet content from one account from the other accounts you wish to share that post from. This should only be done from a small number of distinct accounts that you directly control.
This could be a problem to you if you have a business account, say, on Twitter and also a personal account which you automate identical tweets across to promote your goods, then you would fall foul of these new regulations and possibly risk the suspension of your accounts.
The answer is to offer a bit more variety and keep automation to a minimum. That’s sold advice anyway on social because people don’t want to see repetitive content from you. And it’s worth reiterating that original, creative content on social, alongside genuine interaction will fell users will always be better.
There is really a bigger question regarding Twitter and promoting your goods across and of the variety of social media platforms and that’s whether it is effective. We sometimes hear good things but it does depend on the effort you apply and what you sell.
