How do you determine who you follow back? Is it with an auto follow tool? Do you hand pick each and every one, and if you do, do you have a specific process for this?
I have been using Twitter since early 2007 and have tried many different ways to not only follow “real” accounts back, but to also cut down the actual time spent following back accounts.
Let me introduce you to the ”Three Strikes, You’re Out” tactic.
When you are logged in on Twitter.com and you click a new followers name you will see a preview of the Twitterer appear to the right. This is the only chance about 99.9% of people that follow me get to entice me into following them back. The first thing I look at and really the only thing that influences my decision is the Recent Tweets section.
1. If your three recent Tweets are all links like this one, I won’t follow you.
2. RTs are great, but if all three of these are nothing but a retweet (especially retweeting the same account), I won’t follow you UNLESS you are commenting along with the RT.
3. Are you engaging? @Replies that are social and seem to be carrying on a nice conversation is exactly what I’m looking for. If I see this even just once, I WILL follow you.
Social Media is meant to be social. It’s good to have a healthy balance of engagement, promotion, link sharing and retweets.
What are your thoughts?
Do you have any specifics to following and unfollowing?
In my opinion you are an arrogant [censored by Kim] -> word that rhymes with hunt [end of censoring]. You are retarded <- [I prefer to say special- Kim's comment] for making an entire blog post about whats worthy of your time on twitter. Eat another bucket of fried chicken.
In my opinion, and yes I’m allowed to have one since this is indeed my blog, you obviously missed the point of the post. That’s OK though…. I am such a NICE person, not only did I put down the bucket of fried chicken, but I will also explain to you what this blog post meant.
This blog was more focused on the fact that Social Media is meant to be social, not spammy or automated. You do whatever you choose to do with your account, I could care less and YES my time is precious as many accounts do follow my Twitter accounts daily (personal, businesses and clients) and I do not have time to sift through your top 20 posts nor do I feel the need to follow everyone back knowing there is a good chance I will unfollow at least 50% of them.
Thanks for stopping by and voicing your opinion. Sorry I had to censor some of your language, but I don’t feel like anyone else visiting my blog should have to see language I wouldn’t even use.
I hope you have a GREAT week!
Jason’s comment kind of makes me laugh, because I believe he’s the one being arrogant.
I don’t find your post uninteresting because I don’t always know who to follow or not. Most of the time I just look if they have recent posts and if I’m interested ^^
I select who to follow in a very similar way. If you follow me, and I don’t recognize your name, I won’t check out your profile. Unless you have a blog, or engage with me directly, I won’t look. If I like your blog, find you on Twitter myself, or engage with me, then I’ll check you out. I disagree that it should be a requirement to engage with people though to be followed. I’m usually more likely to follow someone, the more they share content. Look at accounts like Mashable where they do very little to engage, but share huge amounts of excellent content. If you disregard people based on not engaging with others, you are probably missing out on tons of excellent content.
On another note, I would never follow someone who uses language and is as disrespectful as the poster of the other comment. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Most peoples time is very valuable. Wasting time by going out of your way just to disrespect someone you don’t agree with shows everyone what little value your time has.
I too have rules that I use to follow people. Of course if I know the person or their work I will follow, if they engage me in conversation consistently or if the twitter stream has good content (much like you mention) will help as well. I do retweet without adding comments, many times there isn’t enough room with out changing the original tweet’s meaning.
bodynsoil�´s last [type] ..Watching: America ~ The Story of Us
This may appear to be a cocky statement I’m about to make, but I’m going to risk sounding that way. I follow Mashable, Techcrunch, CNN and all the other media outlets, I don’t need to connect with someone that is strictly linking out the same exact links with no interaction. That’s not fun nor does it make sense. Social media begins with SOCIAL and in my opinion is meant to be social. If you’re Mashable, great. I can however tell you that when I first got on Twitter, they were sociable too. Same with Guy Kawasaki (yes we used to Tweet together, I could pull up some convos) and now I rarely follow him at all because the social aspect has been lost. People are social beings, and I believe we need to start embracing that.
Moral, create a happy balance of updates, promoting, links and interactions. That’s really the best strategy and solution.
If I see that a person is constantly linking to product pages on their website, trying desperately to get his/her followers to buy something, it’s “Peace out” from me…
Sonny – Kids’ Craft BlogsÃ�´s last [type] ..The Wizard Chooses the Wand, Mr. Potter
Sonny,
I’m right there with you!
Kim Randall�´s last [type] ..Google+ Spam Issues
HI KIm, Thanks for posting this topic because I’ve learned something new and to be honest this is really helpful to me and to my friends I will tell this to them..
Fatima Hipolito�´s last [type] ..SMS