How to Get Me to Unfollow your Twitter Feed

— June 06, 2011 (9 comments)
I know this is going to cause a swath of readers freaking out wondering, "Am I good enough? Will Adam unfollow me too?!" Because, of course, you're ALL worried about what I think of you. (That's how it is in my head, at least. Maybe I should see someone about that...).

Okay, so nobody's worried about my follow. But to avoid hurt feelings, I want to lay this disclaimer: I unfollow people rarely, and only when they define themselves by tweets like the ones below. If you do some of these sometimes, but other times post something witty or interesting, or converse with me like a human being (as opposed to a marketeer), then chances are very good you're safe.

But if these are the ONLY things you Tweet, then you might rethink your social media strategy:
  • Follow Friday (#FF) lists of random Twitter handles, with no explanation as to why I should follow all these people you crammed into 140 characters.
  • Publicly thanking a list of random Twitter handles for the #FF mention.
  • Tweeting "Good morning" every time you get on and nothing else.*
  • Links to your blog, your book, you, you, YOU.
  • Tweet 20 times within a couple of minutes, thus filling my entire timeline with you.

Again, if you sometimes tweet things like this, don't worry. I link to my blog post too (a lot of my traffic comes from Twitter), but I try to keep that from being the only thing I say. The people I drop are the ones who followed me just for the follow-back, who just want to up their numbers even though nobody's actually listening to them, who don't intend to interact or read anyone's tweets but their own.

What behavior on Twitter (or any social media) bugs you the most? What do you LIKE people to do?



* I realize some people use Twitter only for conversation, and "Good morning" is a way to let their followers know they're on and ready to talk, but if I don't converse with you, it's all I see. Besides, we can talk without me following you.

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9 comments:

  1. Self-promotion, definitely.
    Ego's a big turnoff.
    Continued lack of response to @ tweets (which I kind of relate to the ego).

    I'm sure I will discover more as my twitter journey progresses.

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  2. Yeah, ego! That sums up a lot of things, I think.

    I don't think I'd unfollow someone JUST because they never responded to a mention (Neil Gaiman and Nathan Fillion, for example, have never responded to me). But you're right that it would probably factor into the equation.

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  3. Ok, sorry for the #LennyLeeFest spammage the other day, but I couldn't help myself.

    :)

    I don't follow back anymore (unless it's someone I have personal contact with), which has reduced my twitter stress. I like witty, so if you're even occasionally witty, I'm pretty well hooked. :)

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  4. I block people that I think are spammy when they first start to follow me.

    I used to unfollow when I lost interest but one person was really upset by that so I just leave people in my unsorted list if I'm not really reading their tweets.

    I think #ff is a complete waste of time, unless you recommend just one person that week and say why. I pretty much agree with your other gripes too!

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  5. Constantly have long back-and-forth conversations with someone when you could either DM or IM each other or email, as you clearly know each other that well (or with someone you could phone, as one pair does say they talk on the phone). These conversations fill up my timeline.

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  6. I'm fairly new to Twitter, and I've always felt a little weird that I wasn't doing the #ff thing, but they've always irritated me too, so... At the risk of being rude or uncool, wasn't gonna. I don't do the thanking thing, either, or whatever it is people do on Wednedays. I might do a #fridayreads... or not. Probably most of my posts are a link to a blog post, since there are days I don't post at all, but when I'm on, I do try to throw something personal out there at last once a day. Relieved I'm not the only one who's experiencing Twittter overload.

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  7. @fairy: Wow, I'm amazed people even watch who unfollows them. I don't know how I'd do that, except to obessively scan my followers list o_O

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  8. I'm not on it enough for anything to bother me, but if you look at my blog post for today you'll see that occasionally I will flood your feed with repeated silly hashtags. It's usually only on weekend nights, when I'm drunk, so hopefully that won't bother you too much. Assuming you even follow me. I can't remember.

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