Twitter - who do you follow & why?

[Dorinda Duclos-Favors by Dorinda]

Lately I have been getting a lot of email from twitter that so and so is following me. Some of these people have thousands of followers. Yet they have no significance to me. They don't tweet about my field of business or interests and I don't tweet about theirs. So why are they following me? Don't get me wrong, I have met a lot of interesting people this way. I do check every profile that comes across my email to see what this person is like. You can be pretty sure if you're an MLM or a porn star, I'm not following you!! I am looking for quality tweets while I believe these people are still doing the numbers game. Follow me & I'll follow you......

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Dorinda

[Lindy Asimus]

Numbers baby, that's why they are following you. Much of it automated, never sullied by human hands ;-)

I check every profile, If there are no tweets and a squillion following I don't follow them.

If they are repeating the same spammy message I don't follow them.

If they have no personal interactions at all I may not follow them.

If they have a page of scripture quotes, I don't follow them.

If they have a page of obnoxious tweets, I don't follow.


Otherwise, I am pretty open!

I should perhaps add... if they DM me with spam, I will unfollow them.

If they are posting crap about "Get 400 followers a day" I will unfollow them in most cases.

Recently this has happened with some people who I wish to follow... So ideas on how to broach this kind of issue with people would be appreciated. Some get sensitive to feedback like this.

[Howard Larson]

I will not follow any MLM, get a 1000 new follwers in 24 hours or a porn star people but will pretty much follow everyone else. I figure if one of the people with thousands of followers gives me a RT I will extend out to their follers and might find a good hit. As long as they don't spam up my screen with twits I'm happy. Then at least once a week I will use http://friendorfollow.com and take out the unfollowers I don't want.

[Alex Blom]

All too many are automating their Twitter accounts to get big money. They automatically follow, and unfollow if you don't follow them back.


Previously I automatically followed all those who followed me back (as a courtesy) automatically. I had to stop that due to all of the MLMers and Spammers. Now I manually follow people back a week after they follow me (so if they play the numbers game I miss them). I still do try and follow people back, its a courtesy to me.

[Lindy Asimus]

Riddle me this, Alex. Where does the 'big money' these rackets promise supposedly come from?

[Lamar Morgan]

To do Twitter right, you need to do what Twitter itself instructs - provide VALUE.  It's that simple.  Don't push a sales message on Twitter. Give your audience something that can actually benefit them. The saying, "Givers gain" is true.  If you want what you say to be retweeted by someone else, say something that is worth passing along to other people. Why?  Because it benefits them.

I have actually found myself the subject of #FollowFriday - not because I said something clever, but because I passed along something clever said by someone else.  Yes, on Twitter, you can actually be given recognition for retweeting someone else's tweet.

 

Lamar Morgan