Why I Follow (and Why I Don't) on Twitter

I find that as time goes by, my rules of engagement with Twitter evolve. I suppose a lot of this has to do with the fact that Twitter itself is evolving. As more people join, and more people follow and are followed by more people, the systems we all develop for how we relate to each other evolve. But, I’m evolving as well. I’ve developed – or am developing, rather – a Twitter personality (for better or worse).

My simple rule for following used to be “If I follow you, attempt to contact you, and you don’t respond, I unfollow”. That’s still pretty true, but I’ve tempered the view to be a little more flexible. There are a few “news and information” people I do follow that don’t respond to me. My hard and fast rule about “this is a social networking application” is not so hard and fast anymore. But this is still very different to me then following some celebrity who posts updates to their life with no intention of ever interacting with their followers. And this is fine; there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not anything I choose to participate in. I’d rather pick up a copy of People.

I use to automatically follow anybody who followed me. This has shifted, as well, as the porn spam bots and the “I’ll show you how to get 100,000 followers a day!” tweeters proliferated. The first thing I do now when I get a new follower is to read a page or two of their tweets. You can get a feeling pretty quickly about what sort of Tweeter you’re dealing with this way. If the follower only posts once or twice a week, no follow. Here are some things I look for:

1. Do you only retweet? I still pretty much look for interaction on here, and with a few notable exceptions, “news feed” accounts like these don’t attract me much. If you do only retweet, it’s got to be pretty darn informational for me to follow. (And there are some. @raybeckerman, for example. Highly recommend.)

2. Are you selling something to me? I’m a “pull” rather than “push” consumer. I tend to seek out the things I want to buy rather than let them seek me. No follow. To me, it’s ok to use Twitter to “market yourself”, ie. Circulate your book idea, song, poetry, blog, as long as that’s not ALL you are doing. This is not the same as direct selling indiscriminately to me. We’re all trying to “market” ourselves in some way, after all. Just don’t let it be the only reason you’re using Twitter. (I’m looking for interaction.)

3. Do you only publish inspirational aphorisms? I have to say that these things all tend to blur together after a few days of reading them. Ghandi can’t possible have said all this stuff, can he? When was the last time you read one that was truly unique and new? They’re OK in small doses and when genuinely unique, but some folks do almost nothing but speak in aphorisms on Twitter. I was reading a stream of these between two Tweeters a few days ago, replete with “Good one!” and “Wow, where did you get this one!?” Like dueling aphorisms. Appears shallow, insincere and vapid after a while.

4. If your tweets are totally focused on getting me (and you) “100s of followers a day”, we probably don’t have much in common. Why would I want 100s of followers a day if it weren’t for the purpose of selling them something?

5. If you are a “life coach” I’m not much interested. My life coach has a few letters after her name (LPC, MA.) Call me old fashioned, but there are some things I think you ought to be government certified to do, and this is one of them. And I certainly didn’t find her through a free internet social network application.

6. How many people do you follow? If you already follow 10,000 people and your bio says you’re a “social networking media guru”, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to miss my tweets if I don’t follow you. Again, looking for REAL interaction.

7. Are you in stealth mode? I understand that identity theft is a big issue, but if it’s that big an issue, perhaps you shouldn’t be using the internet for social interaction. If you have no name, no location, no profile, why would I want to follow you? Again, it’s about interaction. Still, I have some great twitter friends who are in stealth mode, but they sought out real interaction with me first. That’s the key. I have only asked for one permission to follow a protected updates account, and that was because she was referred to me. This is too much like the FaceBook and MySpace “friends request” deal which is antithetical to the whole Twitter experience to me.

8. Are you following me in response to something I said? I will almost automatically follow someone in this case. A “blind follow”, or a follower who found you by bot doesn’t present much of a promise of interaction to me.

9. Do you have anything interesting to say? To me, this is the number one reason to follow, perhaps even above and beyond the chance of interaction. But more importantly, the question I ask is “Do you have anything interesting to say to me?”

10. How much do you tweet? Too much and too little are key to me. If you tweet once every 15 seconds or only once a week, I’m not much interested in you feed.

11. Do you have “auto this and that” turned on? There are some accounts that spit out tweets ever couple of minutes that are obviously coming out of some canned app. The same tweet will recycle every couple of minutes. Like following an answering machine.

Looking at this list, I think there are two keys to following. Interaction is certainly most important. Informational can trump this, but the information has to be from someone really interesting, or be in itself very unique and informational. I really think the very core concept of a social networking application is direct interaction, and choose to use Twitter this way. Your mileage may vary, though!

Later.