As always on a Sunday, I wake up with the intention of cleaning. It is the one day of the week reserved for the big clean. Sure, we dust vacuum and clean during the week, but Sunday is for the big things, windows, beds, rabbits, gardening etc.
However, this morning when I woke, I had an extra item on the list. Something that I have been putting off for a long time, but realized just the other day, that I was actually hurting myself more than anything.
I’m talking about Twitter.
I have been stuck at 1500 followers for a long time, and I have been stuck at a following limit for a long time. I used Twitter, a lot, but I never really knew what I was doing. Not in terms of growing my following at least.
I found a number of apps that offered to unfollow people for me, and after careful deliberation I chose Tweepi. It is simply to use, nothing more than checking a box and clicking ‘unfollow’.
What shocked me the most was that I was following 800 people who didn’t follow me back. 800!!
It didn’t take long, but by the end of it all, I removed everybody that wasn’t following my back… apart from Stephen Fry and Clive Barker that is.
If anybody happens to be reading this blog and wondering why I unfollowed you, then the answer is simple. It is my new policy. If I am not followed back within a set period of time, I will in return stop following you.
It is nothing personal… well, maybe a little. Twitter is a platform building tool, and I will not get very far building on foundations that offer me no support in return. I have my friend Armand Rosamilia to thank for this new-found way of Twittering.
Another thing I am going to change is the people I choose to follow. I won’t just follow blindly any more, rather I am going to make sure that the folks I follow are people who share my interests, and will be tweeting things I actually want to read. I lost track of how many random accounts I was following that either tweeted an endless stream of self promoting bollocks without anything real in between, or businesses that had a catchy slogan, but never actually tweeted anything resembled the advice they claimed to deliver.
I don’t know how this is going to pan out, but I feel good about my Twitter self, and think that this could very well be the first step on my way to the next level of the platform.
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lol – I like this Alex! As someone with a following of 13 at last count I can’t comment on the /numbers/ but I know I check out everyone who follows me. Ok…if I’m brutally honest it’s because I’m trying to work out /WHY/ they decided to follow me out of the blue but I think the principle is the same 😀 Have fun with your housekeeping!
Thanks Andrea, I have no idea if it will be of any benefit to me, but my account was kind of stagnant so I thought I would change it up a little.
lol – keep me posted as I’m still a complete Twitter n00b.
I like this idea. Communication is a two-way street and if you show me yours then I’m going to want to show you mine…
Exactly. Whether it works or not remains to be seen, but I figured it was worth a try.
I have to think this policy is self-defeating. With my personal account, I follow people whose tweets I want to see… it seems to me that’s the purpose of following in the first place. With my writing twitter, I follow other writers, but I don’t have a follow-back-or-else policy, because I know that I have in the past eventually followed people because they made an interesting comment on a tweet of mine. And I know that I have in turn made interesting comments on other people’s tweets and been followed by then as a result. Twitter’s not an opt-in ad service, it’s a *conversation*. Be worth following and you’ll be followed. 🙂
That is very true David. I have no idea if this policy will work, but I just thought, I´m not getting very far this way, and so I´ll give it a go. I am sure it won´t be a foolproof policy, I consider it more of an experiment rather than a lifelong decision. Thanks for dropping by.
I’m with agincourtdb! I absolutely don’t have a follow-back policy. If someone follows me and I can’t see a connection, I don’t follow back, it will just dilute my time-line. In the same way, I have no idea who follows me back and could only ever say within the nearest 100 how many followers I have. I just know that I’m careful about who I follow and if I respond to a tweet or somebody responds to one of mine, it usually ends in a follow. I don’t get this platform building if it’s just a number. I guess in the law of averages you might pick up the odd extra reader but I’d rather go for a more quality experience on Twitter (I love Twitter!) than having to plough through a load of dross every time I log on. Just my humble… you have to make Twitter work for you, don’t you!
You have a point Jackie. I know that there are people that follow me who I don’t follow back. Why? Because they don’t do anything for me, they won’t help me in any way, such as random companies, or people just following me because of one single Tweet I sent out. Should they later unfollow me, I’m fine with that.
The thing is when I first started I did it wrong, and just followed anybody and everybody. I was kind of taking out the trash so to speak this weekend. From here on in it is just maintenance, and there are always going to be exceptions.
Ah, ok, that makes sense!