An Unfollow Frenzy

As always on a Sunday, I wake up with the intention of cleaning. It is the one day of the week reserved for the big clean. Sure, we dust vacuum and clean during the week, but Sunday is for the big things, windows, beds, rabbits, gardening etc.

However, this morning when I woke, I had an extra item on the list. Something that I have been putting off for a long time, but realized just the other day, that I was actually hurting myself more than anything.

I’m talking about Twitter.

I have been stuck at 1500 followers for a long time, and I have been stuck at a following limit for a long time. I used Twitter, a lot, but I never really knew what I was doing. Not in terms of growing my following at least.

I found a number of apps that offered to unfollow people for me, and after careful deliberation I chose Tweepi. It is simply to use, nothing more than checking a box and clicking ‘unfollow’.

What shocked me the most was that I was following 800 people who didn’t follow me back. 800!!

I’ll take those 800 off your hands.

It didn’t take long, but by the end of it all, I removed everybody that wasn’t following my back… apart from Stephen Fry and Clive Barker that is.

If anybody happens to be reading this blog and wondering why I unfollowed you, then the answer is simple. It is my new policy. If I am not followed back within a set period of time, I will in return stop following you.

It is nothing personal… well, maybe a little. Twitter is a platform building tool, and I will not get very far building on foundations that offer me  no support in return. I have my friend Armand Rosamilia to thank for this new-found way of Twittering.

Another thing I am going to change is the people I choose to follow. I won’t just follow blindly any more, rather I am going to make sure that the folks I follow are people who share my interests, and will be tweeting things I actually want to read. I lost track of how many random accounts I was following that either tweeted an endless stream of self promoting bollocks without anything real in between, or businesses that had a catchy slogan, but never actually tweeted anything resembled the advice they claimed to deliver.

I don’t know how this is going to pan out, but I feel good about my Twitter self, and think that this could very well be the first step on my way to the next level of the platform.