Top Ten reasons for a Twitter Unfollow

Twitter is awesome, it is now where I learn literally everything (well, find links to everything I should know about) so why am I not following you (back) or have I unfollowed you …

1. Spam  –

Does this even need to be included, oh look another stunning girl has followed me, oh look she has pics she wants to show me, should I really follow this back? Oh he / she knows where I can download and install smileys and wow – look he knows a sure fire way to get followbacks or make a 10k every day.

2. Paper.li daily papers

Some of the people that post these are awesome – but papers are I think never actually read, the “top stories by” – I think they are wasted tweets! – I don’t even know what they are or how they work! Seriously – does anyone see any value in them?

3. Auto DM

Via Karen Webber @ NewsReach

OK, so you followed me, and now I followed you back, your profile looked non spammy, your website looked ok – and your tweets were reasonable – and now you send me this spammy tweet? Cya!

4. Auto Tweeting

For small businesses, corporate news feeds, status updated – automatic tweeting is acceptable, the use of Buffer and other tools to double post and generally time your tweets I actually like, a good example of how to do this is Craig Sullivan who posts some awesome, well researched stuff over the day – https://twitter.com/OptimiseOrDie

However if you are just automatically posting your company blog (one I might follow anyway) I will undoubtedly unfollow you, this isn’t the reason I follow people, it is completely acceptable to retweet your work blog occasionally though!

Worse is the “Great new post on SEOmoz linkhere” automation, auto tweet someone elses content? Seriously? no …

5. Foursquare and Social hookups

(via Simon Hawtin – http://www.bestwebux.com/  )

If you tell me every single time you check in at your local supermarket or Dulwich train station – post everytime you post a delay on Waze, and frankly your feed is nothing but “I was, I did” – your expertise on your subject  matter is probably lost, the odd occasional ‘I was here’ even if you get a cool badge, but three times a day checkins aren’t going to excite me, unless I am planning a burglary, or we are besties, or your Justin Bieber and I am a belieber.. (sad to say I am not)…  If you are lazy and want to double post to both Facebook and Twitter, that, in my opinion is fine.

If you want to see my checkins or for me to see yours – connect with me on FourSquare, oh wait, I hardly post on it anyway!

6. Follow and unfollowers (also falls under no.1)

The ones that  follow you, and you think … mmm ok, non spammy looking, not too bad, so you do follow back and then suddenly they unfollow you 3 days later – your spammers! The companies who do this are the most daft, you have lost good will, mass unfollowing is nearly always a bad practice, if you have followed too many people look into segmentation with lists.

7. My new project, my project, retweet everything about, from, to do with my new project

retweeting everything that points to the same blog post no matter how many times it is mentioned… with a hashtag

Seriously – we know you have this cool new project, we have seen the blog post and everytime someone else has tweeted the blog post – but one an hour is too many – 10 an hour is …. where is that unfollow button – shake up your tweets, and be nice! If it really is a brand new project, then that is probably cooler than you know months or even years old!

8. Daily or weekly how many new follower tweets!

Wow – 10 new followers, 7 unfollowers … erm who gives a glory metrics are utterly meaningless to everyone else – so why are you screaming them out!    I personally use JustUnfollow to keep a tab on who is following and unfollowing and I used to love seeing tweet reach (how far a retweet can travel)  but the tool went premium … !

8? just 8? feel free to post a few more in the comments below!

So does this really matter, why can’t I just ignore them? So I have actually broken my golden rule of only about 300 people to follow, it is now over 400, that said I value all of their opinion for one reason or another – that does mean if everyone does 3 bad automated tweets a day that is 1200 tweets to wade through!

It is also important to note that how I use twitter is different to how you use twitter – so don’t take this as the rule book on how to use Twitter, it irritates a subset of people and auto tweeting money making scams might appeal to your audience…

I really should stop procrastinating and get back to the presentation I need to do for IonSearch in a couple of  days …