Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero - Latest Comments in My Twitter Follow Policy

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

Rachelle King — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:10:55 -0000

I agree - I unfollow those who dont follow me usually within 3 -4 days i will remove those who do not follow me back. I also follow everyone who follows me unless they do way too much spam stuff. I also will NOT follow Twitter SNOBS! Thos people who are following like 50 but have like 5,000 followers forget em I am not gonna waste my time with snobies

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

Len Edgerly — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:20:52 -0000

Chris, just curious: How come your "following" total on Twitter now totals 2,138 - a big jump from the 300-400 you mention as the target in this post, from just 3 months ago. Change in strategy? "Follow creep?"

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

rambn — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:07:00 -0000

My policy is that I addback, unless it's a marketing thing or spam. What's up with these people that follow 50 and are followed by 150? Seems like arrogance to me. dicks.

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

Rachael Hampton — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:54:47 -0000

Hi Christopher,

Wow how do you mange it all. Twitter, blog, podcasting, updating a website etc....

Then after finding the time to really sit down and work.

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

Sean — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:43:40 -0000

I don't have many followers and I don't follow many people. That's okay as I don't want to become deluged with tweets. When I do see someone new following me, I look at their profile. I'm reluctant to follow anyone who appears they will try to sell me something or someone who doesn't have a blog where I can read more about them.

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

Daniel Johnson, Jr. — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:53:35 -0000

My initial reaction when finding someone has followed me is to wait for them to initiate a conversation.

Other than that, I'm trying to connect with as many people locally as possible, so I'm using tools like Tweetscan and TwitterLocal to find mentions of and people in the Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio areas. I subscribe to RSS feeds mentioning my blog properties and Twitter usernames.

I keep Twhirl open during the day and dip in and out throughout the day. Like you, I religiously check the replies tab to make sure I've not missed anything.

I have also from time to time searched out updates of people talking about things related to my work as a programmer and have followed people talking about things I'm interested in from that perspective.

That's my current style, and it seems to be working for me right now.

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

newmediaMike — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:50:23 -0000

Christopher,

You hit the nail on the head with this post. I caught a tweet today from @Furrier about Yahoo running Google ads and posted a link to his story on my blog, hours later Techmeme and Techcrunch picked it up! For breaking news Twitter is my personal Canadian NewsWire as I follow only people I deem to be useful to help me with my blogging.

With Twitter the old axiom, "It's not what you know, but who you know that counts" is so true. A while back my focus changed from social media to SEO, I found some SEO people on Twitter and started to follow them and my knowledge base of SEO improved.

I haven't unfollowed anyone yet, but over the next few days I think I will be trimming down my followers list, I follow about 375 people and like you said the noise level can be a bit much.

So thanks for a timely post Christopher! And the next time you need a Digg don't hesitate to ask!

Re: My Twitter Follow Policy

aithene — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:37:20 -0000

I wish I had one. At this point, I'm following most everybody. It would be different if I could 'group' followers, but right now I'm just kind of open. I recognize avatars, and there are some that I make sure to read when they pop up. Others, I skim thru.

Very seldom to I unfollow someone at this point. Generous use of foul language or being a jerk in general is a great way to get me to unfollow you.

Spam tweeters are never followed, or quickly unfollowed if I thought you were a real person by accident.

So, Chris, my question to you is this...

How do you personally FIND who you want to follow at any given moment? Do you search tweets using Terraminds or some such application? Or do you use someone's bio? Or just your own personal knowledge of a follower?