I’ve noticed an entirely new generation of Twitter spammers… Real Looking (and dressed) People. WHAT?

The age of half-naked twitter spammers is coming to an end. I’m even seeing fewer top-down picture taking Twitter spammers. It’s quite remarkable. I thought Twitter was just doing a better job cracking down, but lately I’ve figured out that that’s not true.

Just like any group of spammers, they are getting smarter. I guess we should just be thankful that there aren’t millions of Nigerian Princes looking to offload their fortunes to my parents on Twitter yet. Who knows, people that are my parents’ generation are starting to join Twitter now.

Twitter Spammers Now Look Like Real People

It used to be I could follow people back and if they weren’t trying to show their boobs to me I could safely follow them back. No more. Balding middle-aged men named Larry, Jack and Jeremy are the new Twitter Spammers, and all in all, they seem to be a lot more successful.

I would look at old-school nakedish Twitter Spammer profiles from time to time, and the half-naked route wouldn’t normally get many followers. I’d say most of them were under a hundred followers after following 1000-2000 people. With this new breed, I’m seeing follower counts of around 1,000. That’s an (estimated) increase of ten times! 1000%! This definitely tells us something (besides the fact we have to be more careful of who we follow back now… I have to live in a state of Twitter fear!).

What can we learn from this?

People like real people. People are more interested in normal people like you and me. Therefor, you should make your profile a real person (unless you are tweeting for a particular brand). Even big brands use real people. Think comcastcares. What are some quick and easy things you can do to make your Twitter account more personable?

- Add a picture of a smiling face. People like smiling faces.
- Don’t be half naked in your picture. Don’t take a top-down picture of yourself either. Do that on Myspace or something.
- Add a name to your profile. Even if your username on Twitter is something like BoxTofu, be sure to add your name as well!
- Reply to people and ask questions. It’s all about relationships, not one-night-stands.

Those points are pretty obvious, but I think the shift in Twitter spamminess really proves my point. Be a person, and put on some clothes! No more of this, please!

Oh, and you should follow me on Twitter.

*This post came from my guerrilla marketing blog. Check it out if you're ineterested in more posts like these.