I've done this post before, but it's been a while and it's worth revisiting now as I am going through a backlog of people who have been kind enough to follow me on Twitter. I'm @ChristinePilch, by the way.
I rarely seek out new people to follow any more. I used to when I started a few years ago, but I'm currently following too many people already to read every tweet, so it seems silly to actively pursue new tweeps. However, if you follow me, I will look at your profile and make a determination whether or not to follow you back. (It may take a while, but I'll get to it, so please be patient.)
There's no right or wrong follow process. It's all personal choice, but I'm looking for people who will add value to my Twitter experience. I like to reach out to my Twitter community when I need help, and I'm interested in meeting new people who will educate, inform and entertain me daily.
Here's my own strategy.
I use TweetDeck as my preferred Twitter client. So the first screening is what I can see there.
- Your photo matters: If I see the egg, that tells me that you don't care or aren't serious enough about Twitter to bother, and I won't look further.
- Your bio: No bio is a stop sign for me. It's not difficult to add a couple lines of text about yourself, so if you haven't bothered to do it, I won't bother to look further.
The first 2 tests happen in a second or so, and if you passed them, I click over and check out your page on Twitter.com. The first thing I notice is, - Your background: It's okay to use one of the stock Twitter backgrounds for a little while when you're getting started, but if you're still using it after 1,000 tweets or so, although it's not a knock-out factor, I notice and file it in my mental follow-criteria folder.
- Location: The next thing I notice is where the person is from. I almost always follow back people from Western MA, as that's my backyard, and I like to be friendly. If it's someone I know personally, they get an automatic bump into my local favorites column in TweetDeck, and I add newbie strangers to a second local column that I keep an eye on. I move people between and in and out of those columns regularly as I constantly re-assess value. Reading tweets is time-consuming, so I want my favorites to be prioritized.
- The numbers: I look at the total number of tweets against the number of followers and following. If I see a disproportionately small number of tweets and a large number of follows, I know that user is a celebrity or just followed everybody on someone else's list without any thought at all, and oftentimes, many of those people auto-followed back. That's not my style. Again, this isn't a knock-out factor, but it's added to the follow-criteria folder in my head.
- Tweet stream: While I pretty much automatically follow back local people, all the rest are screened by their tweet stream. This is one of the most significant factors to me. I don't bother following people who preach, that is, if I don't see a balance of unique content, @Replies and retweets, I won't follow, regardless of the value of the content. Twitter is, at its core, a communications platform, and I'm not going to bother with someone who has no demonstrated interest in an exchange of ideas.
So, that's how I make my decision whether or not to follow back someone who followed me on Twitter. Do you screen differently?
Photo credit: geek&poke

