Already having nearly 550 followers on Twitter @CombatCongressman after only two weeks and
thousands more on my alter egos, @CombatCounselor, @CombatCritic, @3rdWaveMediaGroup and
others (I am a very busy and diversified guy), I needed a time management tool
to help me. I believe it is important to connect personally with each
person who follows me, sending them a personalized tweet or direct message
(DM), whenever possible, to thank them for taking the time to listen to what I
have to say. I really appreciate the fact that complete strangers enjoy
the things I talk about and take the time to follow me, retweet (RT) my posts,
and "favorite" my tweets.
Well, it had become extremely time consuming to send personalized
messages to close to 100 new followers, retweeters, and direct messengers each
day, so I decided to look for a way to save time. While doing a search on
Google for ways to improve time management, I came along a website called
Squidoo, http://www.squidoo.com/twitter-auto-follow-tools,
and an article entitled:
7 Auto-follow Tools for Twitter Marketing
I simply wanted to find a way to automatically #followback those
who followed me and send them a personal message when they did. Of the
seven tools, a site called TweetAddder seemed like just what I needed, http://www.tweetadder.com/, so I signed up for the FREE
service to try it out. All I did was set it up to auto-follow new
followers and send them a DM, thanking them for following me...that was it, or
so I thought.
I normally do most of my social media catching-up while on the elliptical
at the YMCA and the day after I started TweetAdder, I noticed that when I tried
to access my @CombatCongress account, Twitter took me to the sign in
screen and would not accept my login information (on my Android phone),
something that has never happened before. I thought it was strange, but
went on about my business with my other accounts. It was not until the
following day that I tried to login to my @CombatCongress Twitter account from
my computer when I received a message "Your account has been suspended for
aggressive following", something apparently against their rules of
engagement.
Twitter never bothered to warn me before taking action, they
simply suspended my account, removing all of my 500+ followers and the hundreds
I had already followed myself. I had to check two boxes, promising not to
do "IT" again, whatever "IT" was, and the one telling me
that if I did it again, my account "COULD BE TERMINATED". If I did
something wrong, maybe Twitter should tell me EXACTLY what it was so it will not
happen again. I was smart enough to figure out that the new program I
installed two days before was generating problems that Twitter did not like, so
I shut it down immediately.
As a word of caution to other unsuspecting Twitter users and
computer users in general, be very careful about what you load on your computer
and which permissions you allow the program to access, including performing
processes that you did not intend to permit.
I know Twitter's basic following and unfollowing, spam, and other user
rules, but many do not. So be very careful or you could have your account
"SUSPENDED" without notice. Mine is a new account, established
on February 1st, 2013 and I already have 544 followers. I was averaging
around 35 followers each day before the suspension, when Twitter took all of my
privileges, followers, and the people I was following away. In the two
plus days it took to figure out, then have Twitter reinstate my account and
replace my data, a process they said would take an hour but took well over
one day, I gained only four (4) followers.
I am a candidate for US Congress in Missouri's 6th Congressional
District and one vote could make or break my chance at election. Did
Twitter's over aggressive policies hurt my ultimate chances? Did Twitter
irritate some of my followers who had no idea what was going on
and sway them to look elsewhere or unfollow me for not responding to a comment
or question submitted during my account's suspension? That my friends we will never know.
