Twitter can be a great social media tool for mass communication, church marketing, and ministry influence, if used well. I’ve been tweeting since 2007 (I signed up because my friend found a job on Twitter) and through the years I’ve discovered a few ways to lose Twitter followers…and fast. Here are 4 common Twitter mistakes pastors and church planters make and some ways to avoid them.

1. Spam your followers with direct messages.
This isn’t just a mistake we’ve seen made in church marketing, but with marketing in general.  It’s obvious to people that someone doesn’t care if they have an automated message they send out to new followers. It may be a nice gesture but it doesn’t work, and there’s a high probability it will get you un-followed.

2. Steady and persistent self-promotion.
As a pastor, church planter, or church member you want to let people know about your church, and Twitter is a great place to do that. Just not 3 times a day. Instead, share helpful information and encouraging thoughts. Use Twitter as a platform to inform people of events, community outreach or special services. Tweets such as “Our church is the best church ever!” and “We did it again! We broke our attendance record!” don’t work out too hot and well, and may get you un-followed.

3. Using Twitter like Four-Square.
People become popular on Twitter because they add value to their tweets. It may be humor or news related but there’s value in the content. As a pastor, Twitter is a strategic way to increase your sphere of influence. It’s ok to Tweet about daily things from time to time but if updates are continually about what you ate, where you got your hair cut or what’s currently playing on your DVR, you’ll be sure to lose followers.

4. Using Twitter instead of Texting.
Recently I’ve had to un-follow a few of my real close friends for doing this. My fingers are crossed that they won’t notice. The glory of living in 2012 is that we have multiple ways of getting in touch with people (calling, texting, emailing, Facebook…). Don’t use your public news stream for private conversations. This causes a couple of issues for your followers: for one, it clutters their newsfeed. It’s impossible to get to important tweets when all you can see are multiple tweets back and forth between friends. The second is it becomes obvious that the Tweeter doesn’t know what Twitter is for. Again, when there’s no value being added it increases your chances of being un-followed.

Here are a few examples of pastors and ministry leaders who are using the Twitter Machine correctly:
1. @JustinBuzzard
2. @MatthewBarnett
 3. @joshstahley
 4. @mmillican

What other common mistakes do you see pastors and church planters making when using the Twitter Machine?