Really, What Are You Doing on Twitter?

We've all seen plenty of Twitter dos and don'ts posts, Twitter FAIL posts etc. etc. To be honest, they're getting a little dull.

However, every once in a while I see something so unbelievably rubbish, something that is such a complete waste of everyone's time, that I HAVE to write something about it.

Witness @DentalNewsJobs

OK, so they’re auto-tweeting every time they get a new follower. Is it just me that feels that the sentiment seems a little disingenuous if they’re clearly saying it to everyone who follows them?

But that’s just the tip of their iceberg of issues – who is ever going to look at this feed when this is all it contains? If no-one ever looks at it, what is the point of it existing?

The answer to that is, quite obviously: NONE WHATSOEVER.

OK, so they’ve got a link to their site in the bio, so what? It’s nofollow so they’re getting no SEO value from it, bar the citation.

Follow the link to the site and there are more treats in store, just take a look at that homepage title tag:

Dentistry Jobs | Dental Jobs | Locum Dentist Vacancies | Dental Recruitment Agency | Dental Hygienist Jobs | Dental Manager Jobs | Dental Nurse Jobs | Dental Secretary Jobs | Dentist Jobs | Orthodontist Jobs | Dental Vacancy, Employment & careers

Reckon they’ve had some SEO done?

What Should @DentalNewsJobs be Doing?

Rather than just point out everything that’s wrong with @DentalNewsJobs, I’d like to offer a couple of solutions. Making a Twitter account worthwhile isn’t rocket science, it just takes time.

Speaking of which, I can’t stress this enough: If you don’t have the time, either employ someone who does or don’t bother.

@DentalNewsJobs is a recruitment firm’s account, so there’d be absolutely nothing wrong with them tweeting the jobs on their site (even a feed of that would be more worthwhile than their current account). However, to really get the most out of Twitter they need to set themselves objectives – think about what they want to get out of Twitter and map out a strategy that they think will help them get there.

For example, MedicsPro (the company behind the account) might want to use their dental account to appeal to the dentistry community online, source content for blog posts, social links for their jobs listings and raise their profile with recent dentistry graduates.

It’s been said many, many times before, but that’s because it’s good advice, and just because it’s well known by industry bods, that doesn’t mean we can expect all business owners to be as savvy.

However, if someone has advised MedicsPro to create an account like this and is getting paid money for that advice, that needs to be nipped in the bud right now, because this is doing at best, absolutely nothing, and at worst it’s actually damaging the brand.