I read a story about someone getting unfollowed on Twitter and couldn’t believe the fuss about Twitter unfollows.
Asking why someone unfollows you, or even just monitoring it seems like too much effort and not profitable, so for those worried about such things.. I give the following response:
There is way too much fuss over the etiquette of who “should” follow who. I think it comes off like Miss Manners telling people how many phone numbers should be in a address book.
Back in the early days when we were writing “Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing are Changing the Way We Do Business” we saw two arguments going.
- “You’re a jerk if you don’t follow back”
- “No one could possibly follow more than 50 people”
There’s some logic in any approach one takes.. but it’s their business, not mine.
We ended up starting the book with the two words I still live by — NO RULES — who you follow and unfollow is your business. Who I follow is my business.
I have wasted a lot of time “trimming” my follow account. Above 100k, the most likely criticism is “you look like a spamer if you follow everyone” — I translate this a “YOU CAN’T PLEASE EVERYONE”
I took on the trimming project to see if I could get a more realist view of people. Now at 60k + I can’t see anything different than when it was 90K. Which seems obvious to me. I also can’t tell the difference from when I followed 3000. There’s way more tweets than I’ll ever see, and I read lists and mentions.
Still, I can easily respond to EVERY tweet with my name and probably could with triple the tweets. I have to occasionally filter out #FF tweets and other things with lists.. I’ve never seen the point of posting a list anyway (if I want to know who you think is a super BFF, I’ll just read your profile 🙂
My standard response for #FOLLOWMEBACKORIWILLCRY tweets is “I follow who I want” .. since they talked to me, I’ll probably follow them.. as I follow people who I have conversations with.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had numbers like “how many people you talk to” and “how many you’ve helped”
Follower counts don’t count.. the only number that matters it ONE.. the one person I’m in conversation with at any moment… the others are just “potential conversations”
Do you track Twitter Unfollows?
Share your thought in the comments.
Great post! Thanks for sharing…
So many folks in social media seem to have decided exactly how it should be done by everybody else. I have enough trouble trying to figure my own stuff out. I just don’t have enough time or energy to decide what other folks should be doing.
I dislike the services that let you know who unfollowed you. I think they are not helpful for spreading goodwill.
I agree that many people don’t realize that many Twitter users focus on reading @ mentions, hashtag streams, and lists. In all of those cases, I need not follow you to read and engage with you, so the lack of follow should not be of concern.
There’s some good advice here. Who wants to be asked why they unfollowed someone? Thanks for the post!
I’m a little dense, so maybe that’s why I can’t understand some parts. My question is, how do these lines go together?…
“There’s way more tweets than I’ll ever see, and I read lists and mentions.
Still, I can easily respond to EVERY tweet with my name and probably could with triple the tweets.”
I literally read all the tweets that have my name.
I can’t read all the tweets that are there.
Try the MENTIONS button on Twitter. You’ll see people mention you in a tweets.
I used to take being unfollowed (and being blocked for that matter) personally, but now I don’t care. You cannot please everyone. Que sera sera.
Tammi is right, these services are actually posting every day how many new followers, and unfollowers people using the services have – who cares.
Life is too short!
Great post! Thanks for sharing…