Over the past week Twitter has introduced stronger anti-spam policies to make the service more usable and appealing

Twitter for us has always been about 121 conversations and these new policies are further evidence that Twitter is drilling down on this and trying to be more authentic in an era of Fake news, Fake Virality and Automation 

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE TWITTER SPAM POLICIES
These are the 3 key takeaways from the policies

• You can’t simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts – This applies regardless of whether the Tweets are published to Twitter at the same time, or are scheduled/queued for future publication.
• Posting duplicative or substantially similar content, replies, or mentions over multiple accounts you control, or creating duplicate or substantially similar accounts, with or without the use of automation, is never allowed.
• Posting multiple updates (on a single account or across multiple accounts you control) to a trending or popular topic (for instance, through the use of a specific hashtag) with an intent to subvert or manipulate the topic, or to artificially inflate the prominence of a hashtag or topic, is never allowed.

You’ll have noticed schedule apps such as Hootsuite have stopped multiple twitter accounts being selected for the same update

However it’s worth noting that “Failure to comply with these rules could result in enforcement action, up to and including the suspension of associated applications and accounts”

The latter part is really important if you’re seeing these policies and simply trying to find ways of getting around spamming on twitter

SO WHO WILL BE AFFECTED

FRANCHISES
Franchises in our opinion are the type of organisation that will be affected the most

Why?

Because often the national franchise operator will opt to have a “Social Media Lite” service for all national Franchises for a low monthly fee

or

Manage Social Media in house at a national level simply because not all franchises around the company have the skill set to manage social media themselves

We’re led to believe that “substantially similar content” in the policy means you cannot schedule the same updates around the country and simply add the different town hashtags in for each franchise

What do to next? Suggest Social Media Training for all franchise operators and then set a Social Media Standards document for each operator. BUT importantly allow the element of freedom for hyper local engagement

CHARITIES
How can twitter change something that affects charities you ask

Well charities can be human and engage and story tell or charities can use things like Thunderclap.

Thunderclap is a platform that lets individuals and companies rally people together to spread a message

The key thing her is that thunderclap is encouraging mass posting of the same message at a set time which would be in violation of the policies above

There is a disclaimer in the policies of “As a sole exception to this rule, applications that broadcast or share weather, emergency, or other public service announcements of broad community interest (for example, earthquake or tsunami alerts) are permitted to post this content across multiple accounts who have authorized an app” – but whether a thunderclap would be seen as a public service announcement is up to twitter to decide

What to do next? Drill down on shareable content based around very human storytelling. Content that will get shared organically because it’s so compelling

COUNCILS / POLITICAL PARTIES
We all know deep down that Social Media is an echochamber that reinforces our own belief system

What happens though when political parties all get memo’s encouraging mass retweets of a certain political members tweets?

What happens when a memo gets sent encouraging people to copy and paste the same tweet?

What happens Posting multiple updates to a trending or popular topic (for instance, through the use of a specific hashtag) with an intent to subvert or manipulate the topic?

All of the above happens in political circles as we’ve seen recently with #strongandstable and #makeamericagreatagain

What to do next? You’re going to have to have a contingency plan and maybe look at themes rather than suggesting members copy and paste specific tweets

BAD SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES
How does a small business know the difference between a bad social media company and a great social media company?

It’s hard to tell the difference – but we have a handy guide here on How to choose your Social Media Manager or Trainer https://altrinchamhq.co.uk/how-to-choose-your-social-media-manager-or-trainer/

How will the new companies affect Bad Social Media Companies. Well here’s a few things we’ve seen bad social media companies do

* Tweet the same 10-12 tweets on a loop for a year

* Tweet exactly the same tweets for multiple clients

It will be interesting to see how these companies respond to the changes

What to do next? Read the guide above if you think your social media company is guilty of this

SMALL BUSINESSES
Social Media takes time and effort and isn’t an easy win

So take some time out to look at your social media accounts and ask yourself Are there duplicate or substantially similar tweets on a regular basis?

That’s the 1st starting point to assess what to do next

Now it could be down to you buying in the services of a “Bad Social Media company”

But it could equally be down to a good social media company not having enough new content from yourself despite asking for it on a regular basis

Be honest with yourself – if content is similar, where does the blame lie

What to do next? Drill down on being a content producer. A minimum of one or two new photos a day for social media should be one of your key daily actions.

NEED HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA?
Chat to about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation

We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you

Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services

Or

Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk

Alex

Alex McCann is owner of Altrincham HQ – a social media management and training company based in Altrincham, Cheshire that has worked with 100s of local business developing their social media strategy. Alex has 350+ LinkedIn testimonials and is ranked number 1 for Social Media Marketing in the UK via independent customer reviews on Freeindex.