4 Reasons To Not Increase Your Followers On Twitter
Feb 28 2009 
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Following over 700+ people on Twitter can become one of the most tedious and time consuming tasks of social networking. People are constantly following you and unfollowing you. All you really want is for people to stick around, the opportunity to build your very own micro-community, and for people to listen and be listened to in return. So there’s a bunch of tips out the web on how to increase your followers on social networks. Assuming you plan to follow most, if not all of those new followers, here are are 4 reasons why you probably don’t want to do that.
1. Too Many Connections To Manage
The biggest problem that occurs when increasing your followers/following count is managing those connections. It becomes harder to keep track of why you followed someone or why someone may have followed you. As the list increases it also becomes harder to follow your “real” connections & those that are just information firehoses. If you happen to be experiencing this problem now, check out 2 Great Apps For Cleaning Your Twitter Contact List & Tweetsum.
2. Decrease In Connections
Ah, the decrease in connections. I won’t keep you long on this. In fact, just head over here: Decreasing Connections While Increasing Our Networks.
Maybe growth on some of these networks isn’t the best thing in the world. Should there be self-imposed limits on how many people you befriend? No because in the end, while your network growth may increase, your connection with your network still increases. However, the rate at which the connection can increase actually decreases. Did that make sense? Unless your friends are constantly questioning you or keeping tabs on you, it’s going to take a lot longer to make deeper connections the more your network grows.
3. Increase in Noise
AHH, the noise! Twitter can become a horrible place when off-topic noise suddenly floods your Twitter stream. People are forever changing their minds or expanding their interests. In doing so, those new followers may have absolutely nothing in common with what you relate to on Twitter or current followers may become irrelevant to you. Do you really want to constantly prune through thousands of followers just to continuously get a better signal-to-noise ratio?
4. Getting Off Topic In Your Stream
In turn, taking part in these off-topic conversations can change the flow, context, and content of your own Twitter stream. With an increase of followers comes the task of staying on topic and not abandoning your “original” audience, which I like to think of as the first 400 people to follow you.
Professional Advice
In the end, an increase of followers can also increase any headaches you already have with Twitter, and make room for new problems. Connections can be severed and your pleasant Twitter experience can become a nightmare. So please, think twice before increasing your followers and those you’re following. You don’t have to follow everyone back. You shouldn’t follow everyone back. STAY FOCUSED!
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Humorously it is hard to know why someone follows you and if changing your stream to include new content will drive them away. But is the balance then that you add other followers that like that? Sounds more like how a conversation evolves in person. People come and go at will based on topic. Unless they just want to stalk you :-)
That's the balance I've found with most of the social networks I'm active on. I stay on topic and hope that those following me do the same. The chances of me following them in return increases, so does the signal-to-noise ratio (signal wise), and value in each person also increases between those two people.
This could also help in effectively establishing long-term connections.
Corvida,
Good post but advice that's often not followed given it's so easy to follow new people on Twitter. Personally, I've been trying to keep the number of followers relatively modest. I started with an initial target of 100 but have settled in at 200. It's a big enough slice to let me get a broad view of the world without being overwhelmed. One other tip I might offer is stay away from following people who use Twitter too much.
Mark
Number 4 doesn't bother me so much. I don't expect the people that I follow to stay on topic 100% of the topic. Moreover, I don't expect that everything they'll say will interest me. It's a crap shoot.
I found it unsurprising to discover that many people follow ONLY to get you to follow them. I decided to purge my “friends” down to people I genuinely know (ie I have met them online or in person), genuinely interesting celebrities, and people who interact with me on Twitter (reply to my questions, ask me questions, or just talk to me). After I did that, I lost a lot of followers (friends?-ha!). If you're following just for the number or some other graspy reason then I'm glad we are mo longer twitter “friends”.
I disagree with this article to quite an extent because I think that by constantly adding new people to your stream is a positive thing. I don't think it wil cause much of a headache as your stream will manage itself quite well.
People will remove themselves from your stream as they see fit and worrying why 100 people just unfollowed you in a day shouldn't be something to spend your time trying to work out.
Twitter is massive and grows everyday. You will meet more people and some will stay around and some won't. Over time, your Twiter stream will manage itself to a point where the people who follow you and who you follow have a common interest as well as having broader thoughts that make them talk about other topics.
Often people in my Twitter stream who talk about something off topic will spark me to Tweet about that topic which in turn will bring me in to the view of other Twitters who wouldn't otherwise have known me.
At the end of the day, if you look at your circle of friends, do they all think like you, have the ame interests as you and work in the same career as you?
Life is about balance and variety and your Twitter stream will mirror that if you let it grow organically and without rules and limitations.
@googlemyname
Plus you really don't want the wrong kind of politically correct follower who might jump on you in front of everyone else for a perceived slight to a sacred cow of some sort. This has not happened to me yet on Twitter, but it is really only a matter of time. Obviously most of us stay away from discussing politics, etc in tweets.
My strategy is to keep a high IQ group of followers who value an occasional good comment, none of which includes what I am eating – unless I think that food might become a new fad or something.
That makes sense for a lot of people, but assumes an individual, not a brand. As the 'voice' of a charity on Twitter, I feel I should follow people who follow us because they are supporters of ours and if I can offer them a closer connection to us then I should do that. I still do it manually, not by auto-bot, because I want to weed out spammers etc myself, and I still contact people in person – no automatic feeds or replies at all (not that I think they're bad per se, I just don't like to see them overused).
I don't seem to have any problems communicating with a varied group of people each week, and given that we're all following each other because of the charities subject (the rehoming and welfare or dogs), if we go off topic it's my fault, not the supporters'! Also, going off topic can be a valuable way to show your human, personal, interesting side – you know, the bit worth following.
As I say, a good rule of thumb for individuals perhaps, but it doesn't work for brands, particularly charities. At least in my opinion right now – things change online all the time (even if people don't!), and I'm willing to change with that.
http://twitter.com/dogstrust
I just changed my approach to Twitter recently. You can read about it here: http://chuckwestbrook.com/my-approach-to-twitter/ but the short of it is that I had to unfollow a bunch of people to improve the signal to noise ratio.
I have noticed that too, I want to talk to people who share a common interest. Would have want to have a dinner party with these people….to much noise.
It seems to me that it can quickly become much like trying to keep my email inbox from overflowing with mail that I really don't want. Not so much spam, just a lot of information that I don't need. Sounds like a huge time-sucking machine!
At least with Tweetdeck you can create lists of people you follow and keep track of them and then add/delete from these lists. This has helped me. If someone keeps interacting with me well, then I will add them to a list.
At least with Tweetdeck you can create lists of people you follow and keep track of them and then add/delete from these lists. This has helped me. If someone keeps interacting with me well, then I will add them to a list.
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Check it out. You B the Judge, make your own decision! Go to: http://followe.rs/3kq
THANKS!
GEORGE