“Why don’t you follow as many people as follow you Nikki?”
“I’m following you, why aren’t you following me, Nikki?”
“I stopped following you because you’re not following me Nikki”
Just 3 of the messages I’ve received recently talking about who I do and don’t follow on Twitter.
You may have already read my post ‘How I use Twitter’, and this is in a similar vein, but here are my thoughts on following and followers.
As of right now (time of writing), I follow 412 people, and have 1128 people following me. So obviously I don’t have an ‘autofollow’ mentality, following everyone who follows me. I also don’t go around randomly following people in the hope that they follow me.
I’m not saying that my way of doing things is the right way, I’m just saying it’s how I do it, and it means that twitter works for me in the way I want it to.
So first up, who DO I follow?
- People I know and like from Ecademy, LinkedIn, Xing, UK Business Labs, BT Tradespace and WeCanDoBiz – I’ve known some of these people for many years, and know that I will be interested in their Tweets.
- People who have written articles that I like, and put their Twitter details at the end – I know that they may Tweet about other articles they write, and it’s an easy way to keep up with them.
- People who are respected in my industry – they will Tweet SEO news, and links to articles I may not pick up on my own.
- People who other people I follow have recommended – you could call it ‘networking’
- People who retweet my articles and blog posts – if they’re retweeting me, they may be doing the same for other epople I should be aware of.
- People who I find during random searches – I have alerts for various keyphrases and sometimes they throw up intersting people.
- People who write apps / have sites I like / use – so that I can keep up with their news and developments.
- People who have sent me an @ message – if you’ve taken the time to message me, I’ll check you out and probably follow you.
And who DON’T I follow and why?
- People who have just one Tweet, usually promoting a website – your twitter stream doesn’t tell me enough about you to know whether or not I want to follow you.
- People who have nothing in their Twitter profile – unless your Tweets are particularly interesting, if i know nothing about you, I won’t follow you.
- People who Tweet constantly about themselves and their business – if you do this and share nothing else of interest, I’ll unfollow you.
- People who don’t reply to @ messages – Twitter is a two way thing and if I can see people have messaged you but you’ve not replied, then I probably won’t follow you. Similarly, if I @ you and you don’t respond on more than a couple of occasions, I’ll probably unfollow you.
- People who send me constant DMs promoting their business – I know what you do, I’m following you – don’t try and sell to me via DM.
- People who only ever auto tweet – so their tweets are all automatically set up and they never actually post anything themselves. I get to see all the things they comment on, their latest blog posts, and in some cases their retweeted DMs (yes @thomaspower I’m talking about you) yet they never actually Twitter themselves.
- People who Tweet in a language other than English or French all the time. Although I do have a basic understanding of German and Flemish/Dutch, it is VERY basic, and I don’t have the time to look up translations for languages I don’t understand, sorry.
- People who have twitter names such as MLM_1234 – I prefer people with real names, although I’m not anal about this – if you fulfil the criteria in the first list your name doesn’t matter.
- People who have protected updates, unless I know them well – I’m not going to ask to follow you if I don’t know you, as I have no idea what you’ll have to say! Send me an @ to give me some idea
So there you have it, some of the reasons I do and don’t follow people. If you’re following me and I haven’t followed you back, don’t take it personally – I just don’t know you yet. Send me an @ message to say hi, and I’ll probably follow you if you fit into the first list.
As an extra to this, most people who follow me will get a message saying “Thanks for the follow – check out http://tinyurl.com/5d2jg8 to see how I use Twitter! Send me an @ to say Hi!” – this isn’t automated, although it is a cut and paste message. I check out most people who follow me, and send them that message so that they know what to expect.
You can follow me on Twitter here – let me know what you think of this post, and please feel free to retweet it so others can read it.
And of course, please feel free to comment below!
I don’t have a strategy of who to follow and who not to. I like to follow Uk based people, I have some idea what the are tweeting about
I joined Twollo (I think that’s what its called) and it signed me up to 150 new people to follow, and most of them I continue to follow except the sport mad ones….
Perhaps I should take the tweeting a bit more serious and show some discipline when following people. As to people who follow me… who knows, maybe I say something interesting every now and then
I find twitter great fun and will continue with it for some time.
Sarah
Thank you for the plug. Tx
Great stuff Nikki and certainly this is a dilemma I face.
It does seem rude not to follow someone who gives you the compliment of following you but time is precious.
But I’ve gone and done it again and got distracted by Twitter.
Note to self – have more self control.
Hi Nikki
Sometimes it would be good if there was a way of flagging up why you start following someone. For example I started following you the other day because I wanted to join in the conversation on using Twitter for hotel marketing. But there was no particular way of getting that info across.
I suppose the best thing would have been just to send off a @reply. I’ll do it that way next time.
It is through you I found out about twitter and am still learning how to use this and will be using it more often to point to articles and features of my intrest in branding. Very informative the people I follow cause in the time I have followed you and others I have learned new things, I normally wouldn’t come across but happy I did, I have laughed and been entertained so I guess thanks Nikki for pointing me to this.
Jayx
I particularly like your point around those that only auto tweet and in great batches at once! I really don’t see the benefit in doing this and whilst I do follow some people that have this approach, I’m thinking of un-following them. I consider this SPAM and it does annoy me.
I can feel a un-follow purge coming on!
Martin
Hi Nikki,
I good thought-provoking posting.Thanks.
Gary
More good stuff Nikki. I tend to agree and follow much the same approach.
I disagree with Paul’s point above about it seeming ‘rude’ not to follow someone who follows me.
How’s this for analogy? If you were a celebrity and fans were following you, would it be necessary to follow them back? No. Nor would it be expected or reasonable to expect the interest to be ‘two-way’.
The fact that we’re not celebrities doesn’t mean that different principles need apply. I’m delighted to have anyone interested in what I do, say, tweet, advise etc. That doesn’t mean I have to be interested in what they are going to do/tweet etc. If they reply/comment on my tweets or RT them , then maybe I’ll consider following them but the reason needs to be more than just that they’re following me.
This view is also borne of the knowledge that huge numbers of people follow anyone in the hope that this will prompt a follow back to boost the first person’s numbers. I’m not playing that game.
Final observation is, as you’ve indicated elsewhere, there’s no right or wrong as we’re all different and have different reasons for using Twitter.
Great article Nikki and this is the bit that many are missing out on ..
People who don’t reply to @ messages – Twitter is a two way thing and if I can see people have messaged you but you’ve not replied, then I probably won’t follow you. Similarly, if I @ you and you don’t respond on more than a couple of occasions, I’ll probably unfollow you.
Twitter should not be a monologue . Simply posting your own tweets is to miss out on the interaction which takes place in real time.
If you ask a question and someone answers , you could say thank you even if the answer is wrong .
If someone promotes you or retweets your tweet , then you have the chance to build a real connection.
If someone sends you a direct private message , then reply .. this is just like email .
If you setup Tweetdeck as follows … you can monitor activity which affects you.
Column A .. All Tweets
Column B .. Ecademy Tweets … its easier to scan ,
Column C .. Search on your own Twitter Name .. then you do not miss anything
Column D . Direct messages .. sent and received
Column E .. Grouped tweets .. in my case I am following the people who write the software
Steven
I follow a really eclectic mix of people on Twitter, but that’s one of the things I really like about it – I’m not just sharing and learning about my field of work, but also about my wider interests.
As already mentioned, Twitter is different things to different people and I think it would be useful for more people on Twitter to have something like this post (and your ‘How I use Twitter’ post). Your strategy of sending a DM to say hi, with a link so followers can check out how you use Twitter, is a really good idea and I’d like it if sometimes I could see this sort of information *before* I decide to follow someone’s tweets. I can get a reasonably good idea from looking at their timeline but occasionally it would be useful to have a little more information.
As a newcomer to Twitter, I found this really interesting as well as informative Nikki – so thank you. I’m aware that there is an ettiquette that I’m not fully aware of yet but I think it’s wise to have a personal strategy at the outset so that it works for you rather than becoming a potentially unweidly distraction!
Another great post.
I think as our networks (and Twitter) grows, we’re going to face the same problem as many of us face with newsfeeds and podcasts; there’s just too much interesting stuff, and we just can’t keep up with the tweets. I’m at that level now and I only follow 50 odd people.
I’ve given up on reading every single tweet people make. I just dip in from time to time and read the most recent. If there’s some big news, I’m sure that someone else will tweet it too and I’ll see that. It doesn’t feel good to ignore tweets that people make, but the alternative is to give up entirely. I feel fine if others do the same to me. Most of mine tweets are rubbish anyway.
I can see a time when I’ll have to start un-following people too. Some of the people I follow are very important to me, and others less so. But if I’m not reading every tweet, the some stuff from the important people gets missed. To get the best out of Twitter, I think we need to focus on what’s most important. If my followers goes down, I’ll assume you agree
Can I make a suggestion? If people comment on a Twitter issue, it would be quite handy if they include a link to their Twitter ID to make it easy to find them and add them if they’re interesting.
http://www.twitter.com/ColinBowen
Too little sleep means I can’t find Sarah Arrow on Twitter. Someone please let me know. I’ve subscribed to the comments RSS.
Sarah Arrow is @Essex_courier
Some great comments guys – I’m going to sit down and read them properly now!
I am not as restrictive as you are but do like to keep it tight and to the point on who and what kind of people I wish to follow.
Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate
Well done Nikki. A spot on post and I would agree with most of your recommendations. It’s amazing to see arrogance making the transition from offline to online even with a service like Twitter. Some people must believe that their name is strong enough to not have to bother contributing…
No fault with your Twitter advice, but why don’t you do the same with this blog? Why are links to people’s web real estate in tiny grey print? Is that any different than a tweet in another language? And how come I can’t subscribe to blog comments? If you post a reply to this comment, will I see it if I don’t subscribe to the RSS?
Ari, the blog template is a WordPress template – as most of the blog itself is devoted to links to other sites, it’s hardly as if I’m trying to stop people leaving it, or withholding credit, now is it?
I’m not sure how you see that as relating to a Tweet in another language?
And you can’t subscribe to comments as I haven’t installed the plug in as yet – thanks for the reminder
Good list! I don’t follow people who:
1. have no avatars of themselves and who has only 1 tweet or no updates
2. tweet only their affiliate links and porn links
3. have not tweeted since last August 2008
4. tweet only in foreign languages I don’t understand
5. have super-short twits like “I dunno!” , “What?”, “Silly!” with no idea who they’re talking to or what they’re talking about.
I am unable to understand this post. But well some points are useful for me.
hi great info as i am new to twitter will use your ideas
I’m gonna write about this on my blog, this is some good information