Tag: twitter followers

By Posted on Posted in Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with ,

If you enjoyed my Twitter follow policy, here’s some insight as to how it works in real life.

When I receive a bunch of Twitter follow notices, I first scan them for any people I actually know. Of the remainder, if some include keywords of interest to me (e.g., on the environment, ethics, or marketing), I’m fairly likely to click over and have a look. And I confess, if someone has an exotic name, I may visit just to see where they’re from and who they are. For the rest, I’ll open a few at random.

Today, I opened three. The first had nearly 14,000 followers, and if I were motivated only by greed, I’d see this person as a center of influence and would want to follow in spite of unappealing content. But the Tweet stream was all either spammy-sounding bizop stuff or long lists of people to follow. I didn’t see anything that added value to me (and I wondered if the high number of following/followers had something to do with a robot scheme). As they say in Twitterese, “Fail.”

The next person tweets in German. I know a tiny bit of German and could take the significant time to puzzle out the tweets, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Let people who really speak and understand German fluently follow this person.

Third, another Internet marketer but one who intersperses call-to-action tweets with glimpses of the real human being…who engages in dialogue with others that has universal application…who shares highlights from conferences using hashtags to make them easy to follow–someone, in short, who adds value through Twitter. And by coincidence, this person also has about 14,000 followers, and probably a lot more legitimacy to them than the first person I checked out.

Yes this one I followed. I would have followed back even if only 100 were following this person.

As for those whose profile I didn’t happen to click on…they can get my attention with an @ message or DM, and I’ll take a look. If I like what I see, I’ll happily follow.

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By Posted on Posted in Networking, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

Inspired by a Tweet from Susan Harrow, I’ve decided to post my Twitter policy every once in a while.

Some of this may sound harsh. Please keep in mind that as a somewhat public figure, I am absolutely bombarded with messages not only on Twitter but through many other channels. I have to cope with about 300 emails on a typical day, plus a three-inch stack of postal mail, plus the 1454 people I’m following on Twitter. 2390 are following me, and I recognize the disparity—but I also do have a business to run, a family to be with, and a physical need to be off the computer for half an hour or so after I’ve been on for about an hour.

I did seven Tweets outlining my policy, and I think they’re worth repeating here (slightly modified with the benefit of “but I MEANT to say” hindsight and spelling out the contractions/not needing to cram it into 140 characters):

1. I don’t follow you just because you follow me (on Facebook and LInkedIn, BTW, I pretty much do). I check out a few each profiles from new followers day (somewhat randomly, but if your follow notice includes a keyword I pay attention to—see #5, below—it ups the odds substantially). If your feeds interest me, I follow. I don’t unfollow you for not following back, since I followed you in the first place because I found your profile interesting and not because I expected reciprocity. And I don’t track whether or not you unfollowed me; it doesn’t matter in the way I sue Twitter unless you’re someone I have an actual friendship with.

2. You can drastically increase odds that I follow back by sending me an @ (NOT a spam), naming me in #followfriday, or Retweeting me; this will get me to look at your profile .

3. Having watched with horror as spammers killed e-mail, I zealously protect Twitter as useful tool. Spam me and I make it public/block/report. (I will tolerate a clueless auto-DM when I follow, unless it links to something scummy. If your auto DM or an @ message sends me to a game-the-twitter-system-get-more-followers site, porn, dating or gambling site, I’m gone. If you did it as other than an auto-DM on follow, I report and block you too.

4. The first time your account gets hijacked and you involuntarily spam me with “join my mafia family,” I cut you slack and tell you I’m not interested. If it happens again, I assume you’re not smart enough to change your password and that spammers will bother me through you. At that point, I block you.

5. I tend to follow: Green/eco/ethical, soft-sell marketers, book publishers and authors, social media people, folks into progressive social change, quoters, people who post interesting links, people who tweet leads from reporters looking for sources. If you fall into one of these categories and you @ me telling me so, I’ll certainly click on over for a look.

6. I always like to say that I became a writer because I’m interested in almost everything, but don’t forget the almost part. If you have a great profile about stuff that I’m simply not interseted in, now matter how good it is, I won’t follow. A few subjects I find uninteresting: online gaming, hard-sell interruption marketing, get-rich-quick stuff, football, super-techie computer coding…and schemes to get more followers you haven’t earned.

7. I tend to follow people who offer a mix of glimpses into their personal lives, interesting tidbids they find online, dialogue with the community, and no more than 20% blatant promotion. And I try to keep my own Tweets in this pattern. I try to be helpful, friendly, useful in my Tweets. Follow me because you like my posts, not to game the system with one more well-connected follower.

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