Why to be patient with Twitter follow-backs.
(The usual Twitter disclaimer applies: if you don’t use Twitter, skip this post with no worries — other programming will resume presently.)
Late on Friday I returned from four great days at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston with a head full of ideas. I got to reconnect with old friends, meet people face-to-face whom I’d only know through Twitter or their blogs, and make plenty of new friends. Fantastic.
Inevitably, though, the travel put me behind on e-mail maintenance. While I try to practice Inbox-Fu at all times, it’s tough when (a) you want to prioritize your time for the people you can actually talk to in person, (b) your laptop doesn’t play nicely with the conference venue’s wi-fi setup, and (c) you only have time, back at the hotel room, to take care of the most vital messages in your inbox.
Those notices that Twitter sends to let you know someone’s following you? They fall to the bottom of the pile for a few days until I can handle them efficiently in batches — which I did over the weekend from my desk at home.
What’s amazing to me is how many perfectly nice folks on Twitter — legitimate users with no intent to spam or, I assume, to game the system — have unfollowed the @Hoovers account since following us just a few days ago.
Don’t get me wrong: if someone never follows you back and completely fails to interact with you, unfollow them. But after a day? Or two? Or even five? It strikes me as more than a little hasty.
Here’s why to be patient with follow-backs: when I go went back through that stack of following messages, I automatically discarded all of those from people who had summarily unfollowed us. I made two exceptions for people who had interacted with us on Twitter; they made an effort to engage, and it was our own fault (abetted by some technical hiccups) that kept us from following them back immediately.
But for all the rest? If you can’t hang around for at least a few days, it sure does seem like you’re pursuing a follower number instead of real interactions.
A commitment to real interactions wins every time, in my book.
What do you think? How patient are you waiting for follow-backs?
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9 Comments so far
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Interesting topic… but still I don’t get why follow-backs matter, period.
I follow the people I want to follow, with no expectation of reciprocity. I find value in their tweets, not in the possibility that they’ll follow me.
I unfollow people if I stop finding value in their tweets, and I don’t care who follows/unfollows me (except that I block spambots & pornbots).
I believe anyone who expects or requires mutual Twitter following–or who unfollows *at any time* simply because someone didn’t follow back–is “pursuing a follower number instead of real interactions.”
Thanks for your post. I’m interested to hear others’ perspectives on this as well.
Liz T said it better than I could have: I don’t feel any obligation to follow someone who follows me. Like you and most of your readers, I’ve got my hands full just trying to keep up with the stuff that I *need* to read. To add to that pile with some sort of obligatory follow is insane.
But maybe I don’t understand the unspoken rules of Twitter very well….
Liz T — I’m with you. I follow folks who seem interesting, & don’t follow folks who don’t seem interesting TO ME. Doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with them — just that it might not be a good fit.
Dan — I’m glad we’re past the early days of Twitter, when too many people asserted (bizarrely, I thought) that the *only* polite thing was to follow back everyone who followed you.
About once a month I go to friendorfollow.com and have it produce a spreadsheet of those who don’t follow me back. I scan through those and unfollow those who hardly ever post or those who are offensive/boring to me. As for new followers, I only follow back those who seem interesting. I used to follow back everyone as I thought that was “polite” :) I’ve gotten over that as soon as my newsfeed was filled with spam/affiliate/mlm marketers, etc. There are so many ppl with quality posts that I enjoy, I hate to have the noise of others interfere with my connections to true ppl I like.
I’m much too disorganised for this :-(.
If I get followed:
When I realise (which may be end of the week, or the following week):
I’ll go and look at you;
If you don’t follow a lot of people, or are near to me physically, or have tweets I’m interested in, or are a colleague I will follow you.
I hope I’ll get interaction from you, or I’ll learn something.
if you are a rabid RTr or follow 15,000 people I probably won’t follow you.[I may take an RSS feed like I do from @chrisbrogan or @guykawasaki or @Pistachio] – you’ll drown me if I follow you on the web and may overwhelm my Tweetdeck.
If you look like you’re asymmetric and gaming or spammy, I’ll block you. I don’t want to contribute to your follower numbers.
Works for me.
Thanks for the comment, Steve. You said a mouthful with that last line, in particular: each of us must find the method that works for us individually.
Tim, I quit trying to keep up.
I applaud your efforts to stay on top of the notifications, but I found it next to useless.
Granted, I was “fortunate” to have been placed on one of those “top people to follow” lists (Alltop), but discovered it really attracts more spam than anything else.
I also found that even when I sorted through all the notifications, my percentage yield of engagement was very low.
That’s what prompted me to write my Twitter Policy, so those following me would understand what was up (and not get pissed about the lack of automatic reciprocity.) http://occamsrazr.com/twitter/
Those who talk with me will likely be followed. Those content to lurk are free to do so – but there’s no guarantee I will see their content anyway, so why go through the motions of pretending I have to be subscribed to it.
Good approach, Ike. It sounds like what I did with my personal Twitter account.
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