Happy impending holiday to all who celebrate Christmas (and warm thoughts to all who don’t). Just for fun, I thought I’d share some of the things that make me avoid you on Twitter. No, not you, but YOU, hiding there with that red face. Here’s why I won’t reciprocate your follow:
1. You tweet the same thing over and over. Once a week, fine. But if that once a week pitch you’re sending out is the only tweet you send, that shows lack of respect to your fellow tweeple. And it’s selfish.
2. You don’t retweet others. It takes no time at all to hit that “retweet” button. Really. If you see something you like, that shows everyone that A) you actually read things on Twitter besides your own brilliance, and B) you seem to care about helping others get their messages out.
3. You send me an automated response. Oh gawd. How impersonal! Your note, saying in effect “Thanks for the follow! Come see me at my blog!” is basically saying “It’s not about you, really. It’s about how many people I can get to follow me in one day.”
4. You send automated responses with nasty links. No, I don’t want to take an IQ quiz to compare my brain power with yours. I don’t know you and at this early stage in our relationship, I don’t care. Frankly, any automated response gets my back up, but the ones with links to information collection sites or some other link that’s useless to anyone beyond the sender are particularly heinous.
5. You’ve been around for about a day and haven’t posted anything beyond “I’m here.” Call me a skeptic, but I want to know you’re a real person, not someone about to flood my TweetDeck with self promotion.
6. Your picture is, well, too revealing. If you’re a porn site, say so. Don’t put pictures of large assets and come-on tweet lines like “Ooo, you’re going to looove this!” You’ll be gone in a second, but it’s just a waste of time linking to you then going back to block you.
Tweeple, what sets up the red flags for you?
I don't follow people who tweet what they're doing everyday, such as work, school, sleep, tired or the infamous "bored". I don't really need to know that. I want to know what's going on in their minds, what they think of certain subjects. Or information that was useful to them, so they pass it on to their followers. I also like to know when people have new blog posts if they're bloggers.
Great points. I think relevance is important too. If I start following someone because they say they are in PR or love to talk about writing tips, but then I see nothing but sports-related tweets over the course of a week, then it's "good-bye!"
So where's my re-tweet button… the people who drive me mad are the ones who post a whole series of different, usually useless, tweets in a row so you get a whole page of someone.
I agree, Lori!
One thing I love about Twitter is that I follow a lot of people in a variety of professions, and I feel like I'm expanding my horizons. I like to follow people who work in very different fields, but have something to say, not just something to sell!
You mean I've broken yet another "rule"? Where is it written that Follows must be reciprocated?
I'm way too busy trying to keep my blog list of Reciprocals up to date! (When I find that someone has put a link to "A Writer's Edge" on a main blog page, I reciprocate; but I refuse to "trade links" on request.)
It's the same but totally different, as Jay Leno says.
Happy holidays to all!
I agree with you Lori, time is precious…follow the tweeters who have something valuable to share. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Best
Sarah, exactly! Tell me something useful, not what you had for breakfast. Who cares? Ugh! It's usually the same ones, too. Also, I'll stop following anyone who tosses out political grenades. Inflammatory political tweets are SO boring!
Kellie, I totally agree. Mind you, I'm okay with a "Yay! My team won!" or "Hey, this blog post is hysterical", but when the tweets are far off base constantly, I'm done!
Anne, I completely agree. Pages of tweets by one person – maddening!
Georganna, no, you don't have to reciprocate! I sure don't unless the person is someone who has interesting tweets or background. There are people out there who try to get tons of followers – why is a mystery. I want to follow interesting people. I don't want to follow sixteen thousand realtors, car salespeople, gurus of varying degree, or people who may spam the bejeezuz out of me.
Amen, Andrea. And happy holidays to all of you, too!