Eric Nagel

Eric Nagel

CTO, PHP Programmer, Affiliate Marketer & IT Consultant

Why I Don’t Follow You on Twitter

I have been, or can be if you click on a link and make a purchase, compensated via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value for writing this post. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

I love Twitter as a communication tool. But I don’t follow everyone who follows me. Right now, I’m following only about 60% of my followers.

When someone new follows me, the notification gets a label in Gmail, and I go through those every day or so. Within a second or two, I decide if I’m going to follow that person back. Here are 10 reasons (in no particular order) why I don’t follow back:

  1. 0 Tweets
    0 Tweets
    If you haven’t tweeted anything, I’m not going to follow you. I don’t know what you’re going to say, and odds are, you’re just looking to spam me.
  2. You’re telling me how to get more followers
    How to get 19530 followers
  3. You Tweet in a foreign language
    English, please
    Sorry, I only speak English, PHP, and a bit of French. If you’re tweeting in another language, I’m not going to follow you.
  4. All you Tweet are links
    Just Links
    Twitter isn’t just about sharing links. Twitter asks, “What are you doing?”. If you just wanted to share links, use delicious.
  5. Keyword Trigger Auto-Follow
    I said Poken
    Just because I said “Poken” in a tweet, doesn’t mean I’m going to follow the King of Poken.
  6. Following Too Many People
    Like you care?
    If you’re following nearly 6,000 people, I know you’re not really following them. I want to know that you care about what I’m saying. If you don’t care what I’m saying, I don’t care what you have to say
  7. You Follow Me Again, and Again, and Again…
    Get a life
    I saw it the first time, and I decided not to follow you. The second time was just annoying. The third time you get blocked.
  8. All You Do is RT
    RT King
    I don’t mind a ReTweet now & again, but if that’s all you do, I’m not going to follow you. I may, however, follow the people you RT.
  9. You’re Hot
    Hot or Not?
    Sorry to all the hot chicks out there, but on Twitter, if you’re hot, you’re probably a slimeball spammer waiting to throw me dating links.
  10. Protected Tweets
    Protected
    If I don’t know who you are, and you have your Tweets protected, there’s no way I’m going to follow you back.

So if you’re following me on Twitter, and I’m not following you, this is probably why. However, if you’re a real person, leave a comment below and I may follow you. I’m not mean, but I try to read every tweet from each of the people I follow, so I have to be picky.

What’s your following policy?

Comments
  • Carl
    Posted October 19, 2009 1:00 pm 0Likes

    I agree with you, Eric and I’m the same way. I try to read every tweet from the people I follow. If their tweets aren’t particularly useful – i.e. nothing but RT’s or unimportant (to me) links, I typically end up unfollowing them.

  • Deborah aka Loxly
    Posted October 19, 2009 1:00 pm 0Likes

    Excellent advice! I can’t possibly follow everyone that follows me and I actually don’t have the time (or inclination) to even go check everyone’s profile. If you follow me and are a real person, send me an @ message and we’ll go from there 🙂 Oh and if you @ spam me just to get my attention, you’re blocked and reported.

  • David D Ochoa
    Posted October 19, 2009 4:55 pm 0Likes

    Hey, I was thinking of writing this one. 🙂

    I am following 14 people, and 92 are following me. I still use the web interface, and my time is precious to me. Due to the reasons stated above, I have unfollowed two-thirds of people. It’s not a numbers game to me.

  • Tricia Meyer
    Posted February 8, 2011 9:17 am 0Likes

    Guess this means my Twitter avatar isn’t hot enough. 😉

    I actually do almost the exact same thing that you do. I first look at what comes in the email and do a quick evaluation based on the bio listed and follower counts. Then if I am still interested I click and look at the quality of the Tweets such as too many sponsored as, all links, all retweets, etc. I also look to see if you are actually responding to other people.

    I’m much more likely to follow someone if they respond to a Tweet of mine than if they just start following me. If someone responds to something I say and it is actually interesting, I ALWAYS go check out their profile and will often follow them back if they meet the criteria listed above.

  • Ryan
    Posted February 8, 2011 1:20 pm 0Likes

    Awesome list. I’m afraid I probably RT too often. 😮

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.