Why I Didn’t Follow You Back

I’m flattered to get a new follower. When I receive one of those email alerts from Twitter, I get a twinge of anxiety that my tweets might not deliver anything of interest to you, but I launch a little investigation to help decide whether I’ll follow you back. Read my post, Before I Follow You, if you want to know what I do.

For some reason, starting on February 16, I saved and categorized the email notifications I received from twitter about new followers. Here’s what they reveal:

I follow back 53% of new followers. I don’t follow 38%. The other 9% get shut down by Twitter before I check out their profiles. Here’s why you ended up in the 38% I don’t follow:

• Your Twitter name, information in your profile, and the website linked to in your profile present a tightly-crafted commercial presentation.
• I’m pretty busy, and sometimes don’t get to review new follows for a week or so. If you’re no longer following by then, I assume you weren’t interested in what I have to say anyway, so you won’t mind if I don’t follow you back.
• There’s no personal information in your profile.
• Every tweet in your tweet stream is a link to something. I’m looking for acquaintances who have original thoughts.
• Every tweet in your tweet stream is about a product or service you want me to buy.
• When I click the link in your profile, I land on a hard-sell sales page. I get particularly frosted when I land on a page with an embedded auto-play sales video. I’ll probably tolerate landing in a store such as etsy, but please make it an extension of your personality and passion.
• If you’ve tweeted relatively few times, and are following many hundreds or even thousands of people, I’m suspicious you’re just trying to accumulate lots of followers quickly. I don’t see the point. I’m challenged to get to know 400ish people in seven months. I can’t think of a good “social” reason to start following 1,200 in the course of a week.
• If I see nothing in your profile or your tweet stream that reinforces why you might be interested in my tweets, I’ll be suspicious of your motive for following me in the first place. I need to see something that’s really interesting to me or I won’t follow.
• If your Twitter name, linked web site, or your mission incorporates a word or phrase I happen to have tweeted recently—once in 400 tweets, I assume you didn’t bother to explore what I’m really about before you decided to follow.

Your Greatest Offense

I want to make it clear: I have no problem when someone I follow tweets occasional links to sales offers and to their own articles and on-line shops. Actually, I welcome these links unless they become the lion’s share of a person’s tweets. I review your tweet stream before I follow you, so I don’t end up on the receiving end of pure promotional chatter. I’ll stop following if your tweet stream becomes exceedingly commercial over time.

But nothing lowers my opinion of you more than this incomprehensibly rude behavior:

 After I follow you back, the first communication from you to me is a Direct Message offering me a “free gift” for following you, or a special offer I shouldn’t miss. Sorry, it’s a social network, not a “Sell me something cuz I said ‘Hi’ network.” When you do this, we’re finished… I encourage you to work on your people skills.

Here are some thoughts about annoying Twitter behaviors of Internet marketers: Social Marketing Strategies: An Ugly Twitter Presence

Like it? ReTweet it!  Share This!