Can you judge a book by its cover? (On Twitter you can!)
The title of this post asks, “can you judge a book by its cover?” You can when the “cover” is the front page of someone’s Twitter account and you’re judging whether to follow them. That page contains an avatar image (usually the person’s photo), a short biography (no more than 160 characters long), a link to the person’s home page (or company, blog, LinkedIn profile, etc.), and — crucially — the most recent 20 tweets that the person has sent. You can click through to see more tweets in batches of 20, but if you follow many people on Twitter, doing that often takes more time than it’s worth.
And there’s the rub: if you want more people to follow you on Twitter, you have very little time to make a good first impression on them . . . but many ways that you could string landmines of the “Don’t Follow Me” variety across their path.
Recently four heavy Twitter users — Meg Fowler, Jim Storer, Aaron Strout, and Tim Walker — got to talking (on Twitter, of course) about the poisoned words, phrases, and other cues that automatically signal “Don’t Follow” for them. The end result was that the four decided to bang out a joint blog post that talked about best practices in not following based on not liking the proverbial “cover” put forth by fellow tweeters. Here’s what we came up with:
- “MLM” (multi-level marketing). I’m sure that somewhere, some nice person who does MLM could explain to me how it’s not a veiled Ponzi scheme. Until then . . . you’ll pardon me if I continue to think of it as “a veiled Ponzi scheme.” No thanks.
- Tweets that include “buy followers” or “hundreds of followers” or anything else in the “get lotsa followers!” genre. I try hard to earn new followers by being relevant, interesting, funny, and personable. The idea that you would buy yours in bulk — much less promote that process — disgusts me.
- Political ig’nance. I follow people of all political stripes, from all over the world. But if you have to wear your politics on your sleeve, and if your politics are of the knee-jerk type (again, regardless of your leanings), I just can’t stand to follow you.
- Calling yourself a “visionary” or “expert” or (shudder) “guru.” It’s much better to say you’re a “marketing veteran” or “experienced sales leader” or whatever. Let *others* call you a visionary.
- For me, it’s more about “who do I need to block around here?” Because no one likes to be spammed. So if I see any of this in your bio and/or first 20 tweets…
- Requests to “follow me back!”
- Promotion of affiliate programs
- Actual affiliate links as the link in your bio
- Any mention of followers (”I can get you followers!” “Get thousands of followers!” “5,000 followers and growing!” “This program will get you followers overnight!”)
- “Make money online (from home, easily, doing practically nothing, overnight, with my system, etc.)”
- Promises to “generate” anything: money, cash, followers, success, creeping rashes…
- Promotion of tooth whitening programs (Seriously?)
- A mention of your Twitter Grader Rank
- Mention of “Sponsored Tweets”
- Mention of your “Twitter eBook FREE JUST CLICK HERE”
- Presence of “69″ in name (or “Shelly Ryan” as your name… poor, poor real @ShellyRyan)
- Rockstar/Maven/diva/coach/thought leader/guru/expert/pro/maverick
- Porn-star-like attributes in avatar or links (Nudity, actual sexual acts, clear intent to seduce me with something other than words)
- Requests to click through to “see your profile”
- Googly-eyed “Twitter Basic” avatar (upload a photo, PLEASE)
- @ing people the same link OVER AND OVER
Jim Storer’s“not follow” strategy
I’ve never auto-followed anyone, which at this point means I’ve vetted (to varying degrees) nearly 3,500 people. Until recently you had to click through to a person’s/bots profile page to get the skinny on who they are. Now some of that info is available in the new follower email, but what I look for is the same.
- Following to Follower % (you’re following dramatically more people than follow you) – If this is too imbalanced there’s something fishy and I’m not biting.
- # of Updates to Followers/Following #’s – In the last six months I’ve started to see a lot of people with 5k+ followers/following and less than 100 updates. That suggests you’re just using a program to rack up followers and that just wrong (IMHO). I’m not interested in being another notch on your bedpost.
- If your bio includes any of the following I’m not interested: “more followers”, “make money”, “expert” (at anything), “MLM” and everything else Tim, Meg and Aaron came up with. I trust them.
- If the words you chose to describe your pursuits in your biography are overly loquacious I will not be inclined to follow you back. Get real… use real words and tell me who you are.
- If you haven’t written anything in your bio and/or you haven’t added a photo, I’m not following you.
- If you have zero updates how am I supposed to know what you’re going to talk about? I’m not listening until you start talking.
- If your last few updates are repetitive and too self-promoting, I’m not interested in seeing that day to day. I already saw what you have to say when I was checking out your profile.
- In most cases (not all), I like seeing a picture. If someone is obviously a n00b who looks to be figuring things out, I’ll cut ‘em some slack. Otherwise, they don’t make the cut.
- I need a bio. Is it too much to tell me what you do?
- I also need a tweet or two (unless they are a friend of mine and then of course they get the free hall pass)
- No “get rich fast, affiliate or “let me sell you some shit” in the bio or last few tweets.”
- One I get stuck on a lot is the news feed/blog title posts. These really depend on follow ratio and quality of the tweets. It also is up to my mood. If I’m hand following 40-50 people, these folks usually make it in. If it’s 4-5, not so much.
- I will follow ANYONE from Austin (pornos excepted)
- Oh yeah, I don’t follow webcam girls or known pornos.
If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed so you can receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
7 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
My comment is for Meg – regarding her not wanting to follow someone with “diva” in bio. I started using the words “digital diva” because I thought it conveys to a client not too comfortable on the computer that I’m someone who can help. My “digital diviness” is about teaching the client to use the photo organizing software (Memory Manager) and photo digital book software (StoryBook Creator 3.0) that I sell as an independant consultant for Creative Memories – yes scrapbooking, digital however.
Based on that brief description, would you be willing to suggest a word or two that would not be a ” do not follow red flag” in my bio?
Thanks. I enjoyed reading the comments of you all.
Sincerely
Charlotte Plott
Creative Memories Consultant
Good question, Charlotte — I’ll let Meg answer for herself, but I’ll make two points of my own:
1. I’m not (as) opposed to “diva” as Meg is, especially if it’s used tongue-in-cheek.
2. “Maven” might be an even better term. (I disagree with Meg on this one.)
My bigger point: someone can accurately say of themselves that they’re a maven. But it’s ridiculous for them to call themselves a “visionary” or the like.
Thanks Tim. I’ll have to think about “maven”. I just did a thesaurus check on both words, and “no results” on either. They must just be current buzz words.
I’ll keep thining and also wait for Meg’s response.
Well, “maven” isn’t *just* a buzzword. Merriam-Webster says it’s been around for a while (borrowed from Yiddish), and it’s been popularized in recent years by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point.
Hi Charlotte!
Thanks for your comments!
I think I have an aversion to any word that gets overused, or becomes a sort of cliche without anyone understanding what it actually means.
‘Diva’, according to etymology, was a term applied to a celebrated female singer, and relates closely to the idea of a prima donna or even a goddess. Whoa.
I know this word gets a TON of play in woman-focused industries as a result, so it might be just the thing for your market. However, it also gets used so much that I wonder if it means anything anymore (along with maven.) Not everyone can be a Diva, certainly. So how do you filter who deserves the term?
Some people — like an actual singing diva, or a particularly dramatic person — seem to fit the title of Diva, and with Maven, I suppose I could take it if the person were a crazy expert in their profession, and obsessed with their industry.
I’m a writer, so I’m picky about words, but I’m also a marketer, so I know how words get pulled into copy to bring a certain flavour into the mix. And as Tim says, as long as terms are tongue in cheek, they’re less problematic for me.
If you’re comfortable with it, and you think it’s something that is generating a positive response, that’s what matters. You can’t hook everyone with ANY term (and I don’t scrapbook anyway, so you wouldn’t need to worry about me!)
Thanks Meg and Tim. You’ve both made good points, and I appreciate the time you spent responding to me.
Nice to hear from a writer, and being reminded to check the Merriam-Webster!
[...] far, he has interviewed Powered CMO Aaron Strout (a good friend of mine whom you may remember from several of my previous posts) and Kate Brodock (whom I know slightly via [...]