TomTravel2

To Follow, or Not to Follow? That is the Question!

I just spent about half an hour going through all the new people who followed me this week. I try to get at that task more often, but on a busy week I just don’t. I was pleased to find many interesting folks who showed up. I followed most of the new tweeps back. There were a few I did not choose to follow back which is the subject of this missive.

When I started on Twitter six months ago, I followed everyone back. I did this until I started hitting limits on who I could follow when I hit the magic number of followers. I began to look at who I was following and who was following me in a new light. I also became more selective in who I decided to follow. What “follows” is the loose set of rules I now use to pick who I will follow and who I will not. If you are new to Twitter you might find this helpful if your goal is to have people follow you.

I won’t follow you if…

• If I can’t figure out from your profile and your tweets who you are, I won’t follow you. You may be a swell person, but how am I to know? Put a picture of yourself or an icon that says something about you on your profile! Describe something about your work, your interests, or where you are from. Put a link to your website or at least a Facebook or MySpace page. Write some tweets that tell me something about who you are and what you are about. I look at all this stuff, and if I still don’t know anything about you, I won’t follow you.
• I won’t follow you if you are a robot. If your tweet stream is  just tweeting the same link over and over, I have no use for it. If your tweet stream is a constant flood of news items or press releases you can count me out (I made exceptions for airport updates and my local weather). If you are relentlessly selling something you are not for me.
• If you are trying to recruit me for anything then you are barking up the wrong tree. I generally will not follow MLM , network marketing or affiliate marketing people whose sole purpose on Twitter is to recruit. I make some exceptions for those who offer interesting tweets and only the occasional self promotional tweet. Twitter is a social media not a broadcast media. If you are sociable you are more likely to be successful promoting yourself.
• If your tweet stream is trying to convert me to your religion I will not follow you. I am very happy with my own, and I neither want to hear about yours nor want to tell you about mine.
• If you are angry, extreme in your views, or mean spirited, I will not follow you. I have no room for hate or flame wars in my tweet stream.
• I won’t follow you if you are linking to your porn site. No matter how hot your picture looks.
• If I think you are trying to game the system, I won’t follow you.

Some Leeway?

These are my general guidelines for who I follow and who I don’t. They are not set in stone, and I do bend them quite a bit. I don’t have much time to decide “Do I want to follow this person?” I do take the time to look at each new followers profile though. If I can’t see a reason that I would want to add them to my tweet stream, or I do see a reason not to I just move on. I am much more likely to follow you anyway if you are in the travel business. I am more likely to follow you anyway if I can see that you live in Arizona.

I am not the only person who uses discretion in following. Many have expressed some similar philosophies in blogs and tweets. If you are wanting more people to follow you back, you might learn something from this post that could benefit you. If I did not follow you back because you lacked a complete picture for me to look at, add to your profile, post some friendly tweets, send out some @replies, unfollow me and then follow me again. Chances are good I will follow you back.