Twitter: Go for quality, not quantity!

One of the commonest mistakes I come across from people who are new to Twitter is of them following as many people as they can.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad to follow people, it’s essential to start your Twtter account going and to engage with the tweeting community. But like most things, it needs to be done in moderation.

The best advice I was given as a very new tweeter, was from a good friend in the fundraising arena: @howardlake. (I was working as a fundraiser full time then and wanting to make links within the charity world.) Howard told me to follow him, look at who he was following and then start to follow some of them too, especially those who seemed to be working in a similar way to me. This advise proved to be very sound and because I was working closely to where their interests lay, I soon found myself being followed back.

Now let me say one other thing that many people don’t grasp. Twitter is not about amassing huge numbers of followers. True tweeters will agree that it is the quality of followers you should be aiming at, not the number. There are those who play the numbers game, many celebs, for example, go from nought to thousands overnight. But then many celebs don’t engage on Twitter, they simply broadcast at people (usually about themselves and their celeb friends!). You will also get tweets from people offering you quick fix solutions to gaining more and more followers. I always block them and sometimes report as spam too, if they are particularly obnoxious!

So back to the main point about not following too many people. There is a good reason for this. If you allow the numbers you follow to go way higher than the numbers of people following you, then you are at risk of Twitter capping you. I’ve heard of a number of people struggling when they got to following one or two thousand when they only had a few hundred following them. Twitter does this, because following large numbers and not having a large number of people following you is a sure sign of a spammer account. (You know the sort, picture of a pretty girl, slightly strange name e.g. April Lovemeback, only a few tweets logged that either make little sense or offer the same URL link on every tweet, following a few hundred people and only one or two sad tweeters following them!) You don’t want to get capped, or, at worse, suspended, now do you?

The other benefit of building your followers slowly is that you can get to know more of them better, which is the whole point of Twitter – engaging.

It’s taken me four years to grow to 2000+ followers. Yes, there are some who I never see or hear from. A few where there seems to be no logic behind why I would follow them or they me. However, the bulk of them are people I want to follow me and who I want follow back. Of that 2000+ I guess I have regular tweets with a few dozen and occasional tweets with a lot more. Many of the people I follow I don’t engage with, but they are tweeters with interesting points of view or links that I find so helpful in my work.

As a matter of principle, I always keep the number of people I’m following lower than those who follow me. That way I know I’m not in danger of Twitter capping me or thinking I’m a spammer. I do this by quickly reviewing every new follower, looking at their past 6-10 tweets, their profile and how many people they follow and who follows them. It has served me well using this method. OK, it takes a few more minutes to do, but it keeps the quality of connections and the balance that I want, which is far more valuable than numbers.

You can also use Twitter tools to help you to assess who isn’t tweeting, who’s unfollowed you, who’s not followed you back, etc. (I do still follow some of the people who don’t follow me back, as they can still share useful stuff.) I recently came across ManageFlitter. It’s easy to see things on here like how recently (or not) someone tweeted. Anything over three months dormant usually gets unfollowed by me, unless it’s someone I know will tweet again or an annual event that tweets prior to the next event. So, be choosy in who you follow back; keep your balance quite close of following/followers; spring clean your followers once or twice a year and go for quality, not quantity.

Happy tweeting!