Deciding Who To Follow On Twitter
Mar 11 2008 
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With the relative success of a few of my posts relating to Twitter, FriendFeed, and RSSmeme (see ‘Personal Picks’ in the sidebar), has come the influx of Twitter followers, which I have no complaints about. However, I’m a pretty picky person when it comes to following people back. I don’t mean to be rude, but just because I’m relevant to you doesn’t necessarily mean you’re relevant to me.
Decisions, Decisions
Here are a few rules that I go by when deciding whether or not to follow someone back or follow anyone at all:
- Has "tweets" that are relevant to my interests (Social networks, RSS, software, beta testing, and generally anything I talk about on my site)
- Moderately uses Twitter on a regular basis
- I know them or of them
- Is a blogger that I read
Just Follow Everyone, Corvida!
Yeah right! This is a no-no because I have over 150+ followers and it’s continuously growing. I want to keep my tweets relevant to my interest. Lately, I’ve been getting as many as 10 email notifications a day regarding someone new following me on Twitter. If I followed everyone, I’m sure the signal-to-noise ratio that I have now (and would love to maintain) would get out of control.
With that comes the question, how do you decide who to follow on Twitter? Leave your thoughts, comments, and suggestions in the comment section below!
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I have a couple simple rules.
1. speak the same language – literally
2. check their blog to see how active it is, whether it’s a marketer or not, if its subject matter even comes close to my interest areas
3. check their Twitter page for the same reasons
and the last one is totally subjective – if after doing all the background check do they still feel “right” .. if so then add away.
Mine are easy, you cant follow everyone that follows you. I dropped 30 last week due to noise that didn’t fit. If you are on the edge, I give you a shot for a week or so. If you are active with good content and links, I stay with you.
I’ve noticed that some celebs like @scobleizer friend back everyone who follows them. But others, like @ev friend only a fraction of them. why?
So here’s how I decide:
1. tweet frequency – low is ok, but too high requires the content to be topically interesting and not just “i just at lunch” kinda posts.
2. topical interest – by looking at who they are following, and the tweets themselves.
3. website – gives me a clue of what they are generally interested in.
4. civility – a prominent SEO expert I wanted to follow just used too much profanity in his post. So I unfollowed.
I think @jowyang is best practice at providing a really interesting tweetfeed that combines interesting social media news, personal happenings, and other interesting stuff. He is also generous to point out other people’s posts and not just flogging his own posts all the time. His frequency doesn’t bother me.
My problem is that my interests are diverse: China, search, social media. So I’ve friended people in each of those areas. So will I lose them all if I tweet randomly in all those directions? :)
@elliottng
I’m still new to twitter, and have just been expanding my circle by clicking through people I’m already following. I can’t remember which one I clicked to you from, but I added your blog to my reader and followed you because you’re local :). After seeing everyone in either CA or NY, it’s nice to see someone in Georgia.
So far I’ve only removed ones that were just blog post announcements or way too active in an area I wasn’t that interested in.
I follow based on:
What they have tweeted about over the last few days…. does it interest me to know more.
Follower/following ratio — more interested in people being selective about why they follow me (often I can tell who they via, for example)
They've been tweeting interesting comments to someone I know
I know them or follow their blog (like you!)
Don't follow automatically if:
they are only promoting a product
they have no personal information available — a company news bot for example
I follow based on:
What they have tweeted about over the last few days…. does it interest me to know more.
Follower/following ratio — more interested in people being selective about why they follow me (often I can tell who they via, for example)
They've been tweeting interesting comments to someone I know
I know them or follow their blog (like you!)
Don't follow automatically if:
they are only promoting a product
they have no personal information available — a company news bot for example
I follow based on:
What they have tweeted about over the last few days…. does it interest me to know more.
Follower/following ratio — more interested in people being selective about why they follow me (often I can tell who they via, for example)
They've been tweeting interesting comments to someone I know
I know them or follow their blog (like you!)
Don't follow automatically if:
they are only promoting a product
they have no personal information available — a company news bot for example