Twitter suspension rules is not on the top of everyone’s reading list, but it is better to be aware of these rules now than it is for you to learn about them after your account gets suspended. Hopefully, it does not have to come to that. Sending an appeal is a messy process that still prevents you from tweeting to your followers. In fact, people who get suspended and do not get the desired result from the appeal would have to start all over again trying to build a strong following. I learned about some of these rules fairly recently and revamped my strategy so I would not be violating any of the rules. These are the 10 reasons why Twitter would suspend your account. If you are safe, that’s good. However, it is better to know that you are safe than it is for you to be sorry in the long run.
- Aggressively following and unfollowing people in a short amount of time. This one is the most obvious. People try to hack the system by following a lot of people and then unfollowing everyone who does not follow back. People who game the system tend to have a perfect 1 to 1 ratio or something very close to perfect (something like a 1 to 1.01) and continue to gain followers at the same rate their following number goes up. Another tip is to avoid passing the 1,000 following limit. If you reach that limit multiple times in a row, Twitter will notice, and that won’t be good. When you unfollow people, you can unfollow some of the people who do not follow you back, but also unfollow some of the inactive users who have not tweeted for a while. Following inactive users will tell Twitter that you are not only unfollowing the people who are not following you back.
- Favoriting too many tweets. I did not know about this rule for a long time. Before learning about this rule, I simply favorited tweets of people mentioning me at will. Now, I only favorite 5-10 tweets every day. If I do not favorite a tweet of you sharing one of my blog posts, that’s because I do not want to risk breaking the rule. Regardless of whether I favorite someone’s tweet or not, I am always grateful when people share or read my blog posts. A good way to substitute favoriting tweets is sending those people DMs. Not only does this reduce the risk of your account getting suspended, but DMs are more personalized messages for the people who shared your content or said something good about you.
- Spamming people (this one is really important). When people think of spamming, they think of a bot that sends out 500 tweets every day about the same thing. However, spamming also means sending out a lot of tweets (even if that means 24 tweets every day) and not having a lot of conversations with your followers. It is a harsh definition for the people who do not mean to spam, but with the real definition in place, you might be “spamming” your followers. Having conversations with your followers shows Twitter that you are a real person and will make Twitter less likely to suspend your account for this reason.
- Following too many people after creating your account. New Twitter users get too excited. They look around for all of their favorite celebrities and follow hundreds of them on the first day. Soon, these new users are following 1,000 people but only have 50 followers. Twitter does not like these kinds of accounts and associates them with spam and fake followers. The fake follower industry is a multimillion dollar business, and Twitter is doing everything it can to suspend users who look fake–whether those users are fake or not.
- Tweeting too much. No user can tweet more than 1,000 times every day. If you are caught reaching the limit multiple times, Twitter will eventually suspend your account. My recommendation is to stay under 100 tweets per day. For most people, that will not be anything to worry about since few people have enough time to send out 100 tweets in 1 day. If you feel the need to send out more than 100 updates every day, you should split those updates amongst multiple social networks.
- Creating too many spammy looking Twitter accounts. If you are creating too many spammy looking Twitter accounts with the same computer, Twitter will catch you. Remember how Twitter defines spam before deciding whether you are innocent or guilty. This tactic is used to catch and suspend fake followers that are created by the same person. When Twitter catches someone doing this, all of the accounts made by that person get suspended–even the real ones.
- Harassing people. Think about what you say before you post it. If a user harass someone, that person will most likely report that user to Twitter for harassment. If enough people report that user for harassment, Twitter will look into the situation and most likely suspend that account.
- Tweeting inappropriate content. In some cases, tweeting the inappropriate content may not be your fault. This is why it is very important to avoid getting your account hacked. Someone hacked my account, and all of the links for smart phone users led to porn sites. While my account was hacked, I was afraid that someone would report me for inappropriate content, but luckily, my followers knew there was something wrong with my account. The only way to solve this problem is not to tweet inappropriate content in the first place.
- Misusing trends and popular hashtags. Be sure that you know what something means before you tweet it. You would have to be consistently (multiple times every day) misusing trends and popular hashtags in order to get suspended for this reason. Twitter does not want news or events to be misinterpreted which is why they enforce this rule for people who do this on a consistent, daily basis.
- Twitter thinks your account has been hacked or compromised. Although it’s not your fault, Twitter may suspend your account if they think it was hacked or compromised. Just look through your list of third-party apps and make sure none of them are bad. In addition, choose a password that would be hard to figure out. If your password is 8 characters long, then it’s too short. The best way to avoid this problem is to make it harder for someone to hack your account.
Those are the 10 reasons why Twitter would suspend an account. If your account is not violating any of these 10 rules, then your account will be safe. If your account slightly violates one of these rules, you should fix that problem so your account is not in risk. What are your thoughts on the list? Have you been suspended for other reasons? Please share your thoughts below.
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