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Shamelessly advertising my own twitter account 
I am not sure if I should admit this, but… ahh… lets just say I have followed a lot of people. OK, lets make this more clear. I have been a Twitter whore and followed anyone. I later found out that many of the “people” I followed were not even real people. They were just bots, as in automated twitter accounts. So I was following everyone and everything, sounds gross, doesn’t it?
Within a week or two I had over 1000 followers. But I was also following about 2000. I thought the more the better. But that was wrong. I had missed out on some really nice direct messages that I received. By not responding to them, I lost real people who followed me. For some reason I never had a Britney bot follow me, but now that I know what it is, I don’t want that anyways.
I am not sure what eventually changed my mind on this, but all week I have been trying to clean up my twitter account. And while I am still following over 500, I am already starting to see the benefits of NOT following everyone and everything. I got encouraging comments from real people for my sailing projects. I messaged with another flash programmer in South Africa, someone told me the weather in Australia, and I found interesting new blogs. I am in control of my direct messages now!
Many accounts were easy to un-follow. The spam accounts are so obvious. They have marketing user names, send a ton of links and never reply to messages you send them. As soon as you un-follow them, they will un-follow you. Then there are accounts who are obviously real people. Should I un-follow them? For now, yes. I will un-follow almost everyone who I either don’t know, haven’t talked to or who doesn’t have a website listed that looks interesting to me.
If I un-follow you, don’t be offended! Oh and don’t un-follow me! On Twitter you sign up to give and share! You don’t get anything after you sign up. You have to tweet and give useful information. So, go ahead and give! At the same time, if you find someone “giving”, go ahead and follow, even if that person does not follow you back right away. Twitter is not about mutual following. It’s about sharing your thoughts with whoever wants to follow you.
It would be really nice though if Bob Bitchin would follow me back!:)
If you really want someone to follow you, go ahead and follow them. Then give and re-tweet some of their cool stuff and message them, but don’t spam or get annoying. Get to know them, show them you are giving too! And sooner or later they will follow you back. And if not, that’s OK because you follow them to get their tweets, not to get followed back!
Photo credit: photo by me, Daniel
Sometimes you have to follow everyone just to find out who would be interested. What I do is wait a week and then unfollow if they didn’t follow back, since they can’t see me anyway. I will go into “following” and click on the “gear” box on the far right. If it does not list “direct message”, they aren’t following.
Other peoples lists are also useful. Few list bots (unless they are really clueless.) I haven’t tried doing a search for lists yet, but “nautical”, “sailing”, etc. would be good ones.
You can also use search to see what people are talking about–like doing a search for your hometown will tell you what Tweeters are in your area.
Also beware of phishers that are hijacking people’s accounts. I made this blog with all the information I’ve been able to gather on the subject. http://twittertattler.blogspot.com/ Read the blurb on the right if nothing else. So far haven’t found a blog on the subject Twitter SHOULD have put out. Anyway the hackers make your account DM spam and you won’t know. And people will unfollow you because they think you’re a spammer. Also if you get spam from someone who doesn’t look the type, don’t unfollow them, but let them know! Tell them to change their password. Send them to my spamdemon hunter blog, or steal the information and make your own blog. And if you find a better blog on the subject, please let me know so I can put in a link to the site. I just want to stop these creeps that are making others look bad.
I hope this was useful. If you need any help from a “Twitter veteran” contact me at @Scablander. I’ve been doing @Wendell_Howe since April which is a decade in Twitter years, right?
Jeanette Bennett aka Scablander´s last blog ..Tales of Twelve Characters
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Jeanette, thanks for your comment. I had seen your twitter account @Wendell_Howe before and even went to the blog. I need to take some time to go back and read some more.
Daniel´s last blog ..Twitter – To follow or not to follow?
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First, thanks for visiting my blog today, always appreciated and I’m even more delighted you like my special brand of ummm, humor (smile)
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As for twitter, I know exactly what you mean. I have another account, beyond the outdooress, that I went crazy with. I did the mutal follow thing and discovered one day that 80% of my twitter stream was pure garbage.
So, with Outdooress, I decided I’m ONLY following people who converse with others, no @ replies in the stream and I won’t follow them. OR, anyone that uses auto update feeds like twitterfeed. No thanks. My experience is SO much better this way.
I took the no twitter whore pledge
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Rebecca, thanks for your comment. I am glad I am not the only one who thinks like that. Using twitter seems to work better than abusing it. I’d rather be fishing today, but it’s cold and raining. I won’t put up with that for carp
Hope you have better weather!
Daniel´s last blog ..Une poésie en français
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