With a sudden flurry of tweets and blog comments for my original post of the same name over at my Executive Resume Branding blog, I decided to take a second look at my “won’t follow” criteria four months later.
Let me first say that these are not hard and fast rules that I even follow myself all the time, so I don’t mean to imply that you should adhere to any of them.
Follow people based upon your own goals for communicating your personal brand and leveraging Twitter. If it’s important to you to have a huge following, then by all means follow back everyone who follows you and follow anyone new you come across.
But, if you feel you should be selective, consider my criteria to prompt your own list, depending upon your own purposes with Twitter.
Here’s my somewhat revised list of things that will keep me from following you, along with a few caveats and thoughts, followed by recent contributions from readers in their blog comments on the original post:
1. You have no photo.
Personal branding is about creating emotional connections. People are drawn more to tweets that are accompanied by the author’s photo. And a photo helps me know you’re a real person.
Don’t worry if you’re not good-looking. Like most people, I won’t judge you by how handsome or pretty you are. Choose an appealing photo that strikes the right image and professional tone for your industry and niche.
When it comes down to it, even a poor quality photo of yourself is better than none.
2. You have no Twitter bio.
How can I know who you are, what you have to offer, and whether we may be able to help each other?
I have to admit though, that I will follow people without photos or a bio, based upon the company they keep. If you’re following a lot of people I know and respect, who are in my sphere, I’ll probably follow you anyway.
3. Your bio and tweets are loaded with glaring typos or grammatical errors or don’t make sense to me.
I do make allowances sometimes though, especially if it appears that English is not your first language.
4. Your bio is loaded with unrealistic claims about yourself or your company.
The tweets of these Tweeple usually follow suit, with promises of making easy cash, getting whiter teeth in minutes, etc. YAWN!
5. Your profile has no link to further info about you.
I want to know who you are and if you’re legitimate.
6. Your tweets are mostly chit chat that doesn’t interest me, or teach me anything, or inspire me.
Another big YAWN! But that’s just me. I know lots of people who do very well meeting their own Twitter goals and connecting with lots of people in this way.
7. Your tweets consistently pound me with self-promoting blog posts and information.
If you have to talk about yourself all the time, you’re probably not that great.
8. I really don’t like your politics.
I generally shy away from politics all together on social networks, except if it’s an issue very near and dear to my heart.
9. Your niche and tweets are completely unrelated to mine.
I usually stay within my own sphere. But I’ll pretty much follow anyone who RTs me, especially if it’s a blog post I’ve written. I greatly appreciate it when people take the time to read (hopefully!) my posts and RT me. Heck, just like everyone else, I love a pat on the back.
10. Your tweets tell me over and over that I can get 1,000 new Twitter followers a day if I follow your simple rules or buy something from you.
I doubt that the people you’re going to help me find are those I want to have follow me.
11. You haven’t tweeted in, say, over a month or so.
This isn’t terribly important, but I have to wonder about you. And I can’t get much of a feel for who you are with such infrequent tweets.
A big exception to this is if you’re someone who’s obviously struggling with getting a handle on Twitter and you’ve just started following me. I figure, maybe watching someone like me, who’s fairly active on Twitter, will be encouraging and help you get a feel for what you can do with Twitter.
12. You follow and are followed by hundreds or thousands, but you’ve only tweeted maybe a dozen times all together.
This is suspect to me. You’re not using Twitter the way I do, so we’re probably not a good follow fit.
13. Your profile in any way smacks of spam, pornography, violence, or anything against my sensibilities.
I don’t care if you RT every one of my tweets, I’m not interested in aligning myself with you or your world.
14. A lot of the people you follow are shady, as in #13.
I do pay attention to the company you keep. Following these kinds of Tweeple means that you follow back everyone who follows you, or you practice that kind of tweeting yourself, or both.
And here are suggestions for criteria from some of my readers, preceded by their Twitter handles, so you can follow them on Twitter:
@HeidiSiefkas — Tweets that say “take this X quiz, I did.”
@kayross — I’ve seen lots of people suggest that we “should” follow back everyone who follows us, because that’s “polite”. If I’m followed by spambots, wannabe porn-stars, idiots, time-wasters, pushy hard-sellers etc., I don’t feel at all obliged tofollow them back. And I don’t follow people who tweet nothing but inspiring quotes by other people.
@JoePritchard — If you can’t type anything without text-speechor teen-speak. English works well, even within 140 characters, text-speech or teen-speak used in excess just results in gibberish. Oh..and for me….and I know it sounds snobbish and ageist…I’m the wrong side of 45. I’m rarely going to follow anyone on teh young side of 20 because although you’re probably very nice people I’ll probably share little in common! :-)
@amandarykoff — If your entire Twitter feed consists of links back to your blog, I won’t follow you. Twitter is about engagement and communication. Simply linking to your blog does not promote either.
What are your Twitter “won’t-follow” criteria?
Related posts:
Twitter Personal Branding Strategy — The Beauty of a Re-Tweet
Best of Twitter for Personal Branding and Executive Job Search
{ 6 trackbacks }
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Very nice write up! I’m new to twitter and was sent your article from one of your followers. I started a twitter because of so many of the iPad giveaways, but now see that might not be the best thing to do with my account. Thanks for the advice!
Thanks, Jeff.
Good idea to reconsider how best to leverage Twitter for whatever your goals are. Working from a Twitter strategy will save you time and allow you to get the most value from it.
Best,
Meg
Thanks for this Twitter Follow Manifesto.
As a result, I immediately Followed you.
Hope I agree with your politics…
That’s the only place I differ with your thinking…
I’m actually more inclined to follow people who do hold and express strong political feelings.
I’m personally not offended from thoughts from either the right or the left.
I am impressed with folks who can take a stand and express their thinking based upon facts and logic. Twitter forces clear and concise expression of thought. Problem solvers are quickly revealed. I respect people who’ve mastered the art of give and take and consensus-building.
Now, if someone is trying to force-feed their world-view down my throat based on emotional rants, fear-mongering, and lame thinking, I agree with you… they don’t have a voice in my Twitter stream.
Thanks for your comments, Walt.
I should have re-thought the one about political leanings. My statement is a bit vague.
Like you, I appreciate and follow people who take a strong stand on big issues, even though they may not be ones I support.
You clarified it much better by saying you won’t follow those who “force-feed their world-view down my throat based on emotional rants, fear-mongering, and lame thinking”.
I’m right with you there!
Hey, thanks for the follow. I hope you find my tweets of value.
Best,
Meg
Meg I loved the original post and this is better! I liked it so much I decided to add my own three additional reasons and blog about it here (http://bit.ly/cm8d1z) giving you all the credit for spurring my thoughts on this. Thanks for a great post and post redux!
Hi Mike,
Thanks so much for your very kind comments. How nice of you to devote a post to my redux!
Your 3 additions to my list of 14 are spot-on. I’m right with you on each one.
Best,
Meg
Meg,
Thank you for your generous information. I am reading as much of your content as possible tonight. Great primer!
I have put some of your suggestions to use already.
Joe
Hi Joe,
Thanks for commenting and taking time to read some of my other posts. I’m SO glad my site has been helpful.
Please don’t take my “14 Reasons” as gospel — just a general guideline. I go back and forth on these things all the time.
If you haven’t already seen it, another Twitter post that may be helpful is Twitter Turbocharges Executive Job Search and Personal Brand Visibility — http://executivecareerbrand.com/twitter-turbocharges-executive-job-search-and-personal-brand-visibility/
Ciao!
Meg
Fully agree with this list. I’m not against promoting a business with Twitter, as I’m trying to do the same with its own account. However, I make it a point to not ram my business down people’s throats. Also, with the promises of “you’ll get lots of followers!” I believe in quality followers, not quantity. It’s not a competition.
If every single tweet links back to your Facebook page, I generally unfollow. If I wanted to read your Facebook updates, I would follow you on facebook. And believer it or not, there are still some people of Twitter who don’t use Facebook and therefore can’t view many of those links (my husband is one of them.) Make your tweets relevant to your Twitter readers, and take the extra few seconds to post directly to Twitter.
I like the post very much, and that’s something that I have along the lines of some of my rules for follow/followback.
But I have one big dilemma in my mind. I am from Serbia. I tweet in both Serbian and English. I do not want to tweet in English for local related stuff, it’s kinda stupid, and I don’t want to lose ability to connect with people abroad. So I tweet in both languages and hope that my English speaking followers don’t mind. But I still think that many people are not following me because they see some tweets they don’t understand.
Chris,
I’m right with you about quality vs. quantity. And I always steer clear of those who are all about getting you lots of followers. Not the kind of people I’m interested in communicating with.
Thanks for your comment.
Kari, you bring up an important point. It’s critical for the link in your Twitter bio to lead to a web page that everyone can access. Facebook may not be a good choice. For instance, I counsel my clients to use their Google Profile instead of LinkedIn profile (if they don’t have a personal website), because no membership is involved. Anyone can view your Google Profile.
Thanks for commenting.
Ivan, unfortunately, the fact that you’re tweeting sometimes in Serbian may very well be turning off some potential English-speaking followers.
It’s not fair, but they may decide not to follow you because they don’t know what it is you’re saying in Serbian, and they’re concerned that those tweets aren’t consistent with your English tweets. I’m not sure how you can remedy this as long as you tweet in both languages.
Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you liked my post.
Does it really matter how many followers you have? Twitter is for sharing information not just following people. Numbers don’t mean anything unless they are useful.
For example: #teamfollowback – Why is this here? What is it’s purpose? To tell everyone you have X amount of followers?
(I hate these with a passion)
I waste my fair share on twitter. But to read a timeline that only says “#follow so-and-so” is an even bigger waste of time.
This is, perhaps, the best thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about Twitter (and social media in general):
“If you have to talk about yourself all the time, you’re probably not that great.”
Love it!
/Jim
@jimcota
G, thanks for commenting.
I agree that the number of followers isn’t terribly important. I have over 4,000 followers — a respectable enough number in my mind — but it took over a year to get there, because my goal was not about building the number.
But to some people, that’s an important metric, and that’s perfectly fine. Although I think to some degree we are assessed based on our following/followed numbers, I’d still rather be selective about who is in my Twitter tribe.
Jim, you’ve absolutely made my day! Thanks for letting me know my little rant hit home with you, and for tweeting the snippet.
By the way, I love the way you’ve branded your Rare Bird site. Beautifully done!