The following post was written by Chris Reimer, CEO of Rizzotees.com and board member of the Social Media Club St. Louis.
Friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Do whatever it is people used to do on MySpace – sorry MySpace, you didn’t deserve that. One of many thrusts of Social Media is networking, and that begs the question, “How can you best network using Social Media?”
In this particular case, I will focus on Twitter. As a purveyor of funny t-shirts, I find Twitter to be an absolute Godsend. Not only do I find customers, but I can publicly interact with them. And all the while, I’m having fun. When was the last time a company found customer service to be fun? Twitter is an amazing customer relationship tool.
Part of meeting with success on Twitter is kindness. I have found the kindness and generosity of the people on Twitter to be bottomless. I try to give back as much as I get. To that end, part of kindness is giving people what they desire, and I have noticed that people on Twitter desire two things:
1. They like to be interacted with.
2. They like to be followed.
Number 1 is pretty self-explanatory. Unless you’re an introvert that’s inexplicably using Twitter anyway, it’s fun to engage in conversation. Exchange funny and interesting links. Trade ideas. Help your fellow man. Learn something you didn’t know yesterday. Or just goof off with “friends,” many of which you’ve never even met in person. The breadth and depth of interaction on Twitter is second to none.
Number 2 is a bit more complicated. How important is it to gain followers, to follow back, to not unfollow? etc etc. I would argue that a plurality of Twitter users really want followers, and the more the better. Why would anyone desire more followers than they currently have? In short, for many people, gaining a follower is a vindication of how interesting you are. It means someone else thinks you’ve got something to offer. Someone finds you interesting. To gain a follower, selfishly and egotistically, has real meaning for many Tweeps, as well it should. Save for the bots that sometimes clog the arteries of Twitter, we are human – we have emotions, we want to be loved. Why would Qwitter even exist, except to catch those people that don’t love you anymore, and then try to figure out why.
I have been giving my fellow Tweep @joeldrapper some lighthearted trouble for his decision to unfollow all 13,000 of his followers, and then follow back a select few. Since he mass unfollowed everyone, his list of followers has dropped from over 13,000 to a little over 9,000. He talks about his decision here, and then clarifies a bit more here .
Let me preface this by saying that I like Joel alot, and that he is free to do what he wishes with his Twitter account. We all are. It is no mystery that he is a 15 year old boy from the U.K., and I would say that he is highly accomplished for his age, and is really highly accomplished, period. I don’t know about you, but I was blowing up plastic toy armymen with firecrackers when I was 15. When interacting with him, he gives you no indication of his age, and it plays no part in how I feel about this particular issue. I am merely offering a different take on the Twitter following/follower issue.
In his blog post, he states several reasons for mass unfollowing everyone:
1. He was missing tweets. It is true, with no filter to aid you, one could not possibly read the missives of 13,000 people. I recommend Tweetdeck or Seesmic to alleviate the pressure here. Create groups of your favorite Tweeps and you’ve honed your Twitter information intake.
2. He says that he didn’t want people following him just because he followed them. Along those lines, he says that the fact that 4,000 people have unfollowed him proves that he had some of the wrong people following him. Those people were not following him because they liked what he had to say. I would argue that anyone that cared enough to unfollow him actually noticed that he unfollowed them, and they took it personally.
3. He wanted to make better connections on Twitter. He is right, this is not a numbers game – it’s an interaction game. You can interact with whomever you like, regardless of following/follower counts. A hundred followers or 100,000 followers – always interact with whom you want (and use tools like Tweetdeck to make it easier).
4. This one is key – he says he realized that his “follow” was worthless. He says his sister was tickled pink when she realized she was being followed by @DowningStreet , home to Prime Minister Brown. Upon realizing that @DowningStreet followed almost 475,000 people, it no longer felt like an accomplishment to have that follow from them.
And that’s where this mass unfollow thing goes completely wrong. He says that if @DowningStreet was only following a few hundred Tweeps, having them follow you would be a great accomplishment. A-HAA! So gaining a following from someone is an accomplishment? Of course it is! I felt quite special when @garyvee followed me. I wish to god @The_Real_Shaq would follow me. Hell yes I want @KevinRose to follow me! It would be proof to me that my 11,000 Tweets have amounted to something special. The ego is therefore stroked.
Don’t lie – you have felt this way too! If you are so strong emotionally that you’ve never yearned to be followed on Twitter, then you’re a better person than I am. Therefore, it is an amazing Twitterverse accomplishment to gain yourself followers.
Turning that logic 180 degrees, by mass unfollowing 13,000 people, you have just slapped 13,000 people in the face, telling them “You have accomplished NOTHING! And I find you highly uninteresting, so goodbye.” Whoops, I’m not sure that’s the message you want to send on Twitter. Who knows, maybe it’s true – maybe you do find most people uninteresting. That is OK. But like momma taught us, if you can’t find something nice to say to someone, don’t say anything at all. And mass unfollowing all of your followers is unequivocally saying something to them.
If you’re now following 100 people instead of 13,000 people, are you more efficient in any way? What part of your Twitter life has improved? I don’t mean to fan the flames, but I suspect that one motivation is to appear to be one of the gurus… the people that have tons of followers but that follow very few – a Twitter rock-n-roll star, so to speak.
Tweeps, the moral of the story is to be kind and giving to others, and realize that your follow does mean something to other people. And I do want you to follow me!
Chris
Founder
http://www.rizzotees.com
@RizzoTees
p.s. Full disclosure: I do unfollow people, but only those that are not following me.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
who is this really smart, handsome guy?
Tackled unfollows on my blog as well. It's a tough topic. Ari Herzog did the same thing as your friend, mass unfollow. He's now followed back a good number of folks but nowhere near the thousands of before.
I rarely unfollow someone I've already chosen to follow. In a few cases where I discover they are spamming and not adding anything to the conversation, I drop them.
On the other hand, I don't automatically follow back everyone that follows me. Likewise I don't expect everyone I follow to follow me back. Admittedly that would be nice but I don't hold my breath
Gary V isn't following me back. BUt I wonder would my tweets significantly interest him? Same goes for many folks, and me then. I don't follow real estate folks if that's all they talk about. Likewise other folks that never interact even on their topic of choice.
At any rate, we can agree that without paying attention to your followers, they'll go away.
Thanks for the ping, Todd, which brought my Google Alert over here. The thing to keep in mind, with my past behavior, is I used to not reciprocally follow…then I did…then I unfollowed everyone. If I hadn't followed everyone who followed me, I (probably) wouldn't have had a need to unfollow.
In any case, Todd, your blog is one of a handful I read religiously in my feed reader. I don't always comment but I do always read. I don't follow your tweets, though. And therein lies the rub for other readers of this sentence: It's not just about Twitter, but other social media channels you have. Unless you specifically tell people to only interact with you on X and not Y, be thankful people are interacting period; for they can always scrap you everywhere and find someone else.
Great points Ari. There are other things besides Twitter and with those come different approaches.
I like reading blogs, and yours is one I subscribe to. I miss tweets from even people I enjoy, so I hope they get retweeted, or that they blog their best stuff.
Thanks for dropping by.
Ari,
Thanks for coming by the blog and taking the time to leave a comment. Personally, I think the beauty of Twitter, and other social media sites, is that one can use it however they want – there really is not a standard everyone has to adhere to. It's up to each person to mold the tool – in this case Twitter – into the form that works best for them.
The follow/unfollow issue is one I know I have wrestled with a lot personally and I am sure I am not alone. Everyone wants as many followers as possible, and most people have to follow large amounts of people to get them. As soon as you follow large amounts of people though, your Twitter stream gets murkier and murkier, and it is harder to find the Tweets that you really want to see.
Recent features from Twitter and some of the third party apps, like lists and groups have helped cut down the noise, but I really get where the 'unfollow everybody' crowd gets their motivation…why filter the noise? Why not just turn it off altogether?
Like I said, that is why everybody can use it how they like. I am just trying to give people different points of view.
Have a great weekend!
Todd, Thank you for coming by and your ongoing support!
Interesting, and very timely article! I found it just as I too, was going thru and un-following a large number of people that are not following me back. Ironically, I found you thru Ari's page as I went to visit before deciding which list to place him on before I un-follow.
I am doing this in an effort to break thru the 'twitter branch ceiling' of 2000 allowed followees. I have been bumping up against that ceiling for months now and in an effort to get my numbers down to a more equal balance (have been at 2000 following vs around 1700 followers for awhile) I am doing this purge.
To do this, I used Friend or Follow to see who was not following me back and am visiting each one (talk about time consuming!) and moving them into various lists (by interest, value or the 'didn't follow me back but still worth keeping on my radar' catch all) so I don't toally lose track of them all. I actually vet each person before I follow them so if they are there, I don't want to just press un-follow and lose them.
Will see if this helps!
Enjoy the day,
LMD
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