I’ve been going through my followers list trying to make sure I follow back good people. As I’ve discussed a lot here before, I try not to be a Twitter snob, but I also try not to follow back everybody. I look at every follower – I analyze their tweets and their interactions.
Here are a couple of profiles I came upon in recent evaluations.
Yeah. That’s a profile. No tweets at all. For real.
Here’s another one.
That first profile is followed by 3,072 people. The second one is followed by just 870 or so people.
Now here’s the part that might hurt your feelings
One interesting thing that Twitter does is it shows you, when you look at a profile, people you know who are following that account. By name. I saw people listed whom I follow and who follow me.
I lost a little respect for them. I’ll be 100% honest.
Who you follow sends a message
One thing that I think we can probably agree on, regardless of our specific feelings about Twitter followers, is that your list of who you are following will say a lot about you. And everybody has different ways of interpreting that. Here’s what goes through my own particular head when I see people I know following blatantly robotic or blank accounts.
• You are too busy to really look at who you are following back
• Maybe you are not that interested in engagement
• Maybe you are using automated thises and thatses to get the job done in Social Media (nothing wrong with that per se, but it tells me something about your approach)
This is why numbers don’t matter
If you have “auto follow” turned on so that you can have a lot of followers and follow…ees, let the above profiles stand as exhibits A & B as to why that may not be the best way to go, especially if you are hoping to build a network or community for business. At the best, these accounts will not do anything but hold a place in your tally of followers or people you’re following. At worst, people like me will see that you are following them and be a little surprised and maybe a little disappointed.
Of course, in the end, it doesn’t really matter if I feel that way. It’s your account. I just thought I’d let you know how one person in your stream perceives of such things.
Incidentally, both of the above accounts are following me right now. I did not opt to follow back either one.
Do you have a different view on the matter?