How To Successfully Gain Me As A Follower
I'm noticing an annoying trend on twitter. Maybe it's new, or maybe I've just now noticed it.
New followers who are spectacularly failing to receive my follow back.
Maybe it's you. Sometimes, it's me. I might not see a connection between us that you do. Or the way you tweet is incompatible with my way of doing things. It happens. I'm not saying my way is better than yours (I think it is, otherwise...) What follows is a primer into my "Follow Back " thought process.
This isn't going to be a rant. Think of it as a handy set of guidelines to tweet by. :)
I
use Hootsuite to tweet with. On the profile page for a tweeter it
gives me the option to look back through the last several tweets you've
sent. After your initial profile in 200 characters or less, this is
one of the major decision criteria I use for follow/no follow
decisions.
It's not hard people. Seriously.
Do:
- Be interesting - If all you tweet about is the ducks you fed at the pond, I'm probably not the follower you want. Ducks can be interesting (And sometimes even tasty!), but if you're just ducks 24/7/365, I'm going to go load my blocking gun. As I'm writing this, @JStevenYork just shared a fascinating youtube video with his followers about the design of the lunar rover, and how it fit into an empty 5ft tall x 5ft wide x 5ft deep wedge-shaped storage space on the lunar lander. THAT is being interesting, folks.
- Be relevant to me - Okay, this one you CAN'T control, but it's really not too hard. I have lots of interests, you'll probably fit in one of them if you try. Just look at my log line for the blog for inspiration.
- Interact with your followers - Put the SOCIAL in Social media. If you aren't talking to people, you're not being interesting to me, and probably less relevant.
Don't:
- Be a spammer - You're just asking to get blocked and reported.
- Be a link whore - You links might be interesting, maybe even useful, but I'm not going to follow you. Obsessive re-tweeters fall into this category too. If all you do is RT, you aren't being "You".
- Fill your tweets with quotes of famous people - If all your tweets consist of these, you're not going to have me following you.
- Don't have more than half your profile filled with pictogram symbols. Seriously, I'm not going to spend the time to decipher what you are trying to mean by No.7 or a music note. If I wanted to spend my time deciphering symbols, I'd take up the study of hieroglyphics. Sure, it might mean you like music, but that tells me nothing about what KINDS of music.
- Don't spend over a month on twitter and have only 3 re-tweets to show for it. You aren't being social, which is the point of "Social Media". That's a #TwitterFail to me.
- Do share a common language with me. I'm one of those lazy/dumb/ignorant Americans who only speaks/reads one language, English. If you only tweet in Cyrillic, or Turkish, or Swahili, we have no way to interact and I'm 99.999978% not going to follow you back.
- Don't squat on the soapbox. If all you do is harp on your position on a topic (for or against) all the time, me following you? Yeah, not happening. (See above, related to the Ducks)
See? Simple dos and don'ts. Follow them, and I'm more than likely going to follow you back.
Any tips for separating the wheat from the chaff? Feel free to share them!
