Not being followed back on Twitter? This may be why

[Taylor]

http://connectture.com/pa-1492.aspx

[Reena]

Interesting set of criteria. Many of them are logical and aimed at making real connections... or if not real connections, perhaps connections which have the potential to be more meaningful than just clutter in your twitter stream.

I'm going to take a moment to ask a critical question. Had his follow criteria always been so stiff, or did it become that way after accumulating a significant number of followers?

I have no idea who Greg Savage is. :) I hope it's not showing my ignorance.

Looking at his twitter feed I would not follow him. Here's the thing: I tend to follow anyone who looks like a real person (as opposed to a bot) who is also engaging on twitter.

My policy is: I follow tweeters who tweet with other tweeters.

First thing I noticed about his thread is it's full of links... no interactions. So I ask myself: Is he only interested in pushing info? Twitter isn't only about getting people to listen to your nonsense, it's also about listening to other folks' senseless chatter also.

Sometimes people like to talk about everyday stuff that happens in life. Why? because that's real, and a lot of people (like me) like real. I'm thinking about having leftovers for breakfast this morning. And OMG! I just realized I only got 2.5 hours of sleep last night (seriously).

If I got a twitter follower notification in my email from Greg Savage, I might not even make it to his twitter feed. Why? Because his follower to following ratio. I get too many tweeters who are on a mass follow/unfollow kick. I'm guessing it's an ego thing or something to have a herd of followers but not follow them.

So here is how it works. The Tweeter follows a bunch of other tweeters then the next day or after the tweeter follows back, The Tweeter (original) will unfollow.

Since I don't know Greg Savage, he's not famous in my book. He might be in reality, but like I said, I don't know him. To me, his profile just looks like every other marketers out there. So when I see he has 8k+ followers and is only following about 3.5k, it makes me wonder. Is he one of those mass follow/unfollower Tweeters?

There are very few tweeters out there I'm interested in following who don't follow back. And those are ones I follow first for informational purposes (Clark Howard, JA Konrath, Nathan Bransford, QueryShark, etc.) Just like others, I want folks to listen to what I have to say and send me random replies. :) If they're not following, I know for sure they're not listening.

Other do-not-follow signs I look for: Lots of followers, very few tweets. Smokin' hot women in bikinis (or less clothing). Any name with Justin Bieber in it (or however you spell it). A bunch of tweets spamming other tweeters with identical messages (advertisements).

Greg Savage doesn't have a bad set of rules, but they're certainly not golden. We all have our likes and dislikes.

Like him, I use TweetDeck. There's no way I can keep up with all the tweets and tweeters. So instead, I have a select in a few lists I follow. If I constantly find an individual in my mentions thread, they might even find their way to my stalking list (that's a good thing... or maybe it's not). :)

Point being, I don't have to turn elitist in order to have an interesting tweeter feed.

[Bryan]

Great post! Once you get over a few thousand followers you start getting a lot more spammers leeching onto you, so it's kind of hard to have a 100% follower-to-following ratio. It's getting harder for me to be selective on who I follow back -- it just takes too long.

My strategy now is to automatically follow everyone back and just go back later to dump the ones who are 1. Annoying spammers or 2. Unfollowers. It's more efficient than reading bios. There are 3rd party apps that make it easier, like ManageFlitter.

[Marjorie]

Bryan wrote: "Great post! Once you get over a few thousand followers you start getting a lot more spammers leeching onto you, so it's kind of hard to have a 100% follower-to-following ratio. It's getting harder..."

This is what I'm about to do: Use TweetAdder to auto-follow and tick the box to auto-follow back anyone who follows me, then use ManageFlitter to clean house weekly (which I already do even with only manually following peeps after reading bios AND tweetstreams).

I've just started using Hootsuite to schedule promo tweets every 2 hours which is definitely helping to sell my first book, now that it's released, but yeah, it makes it hard to get that personal interaction. Then again, not having to promo my book on Twitter leaves my Twitter time 100% focused on responding to the @ mentions and RTing others. I've actually started reading again! It's a miracle! :)

Balancing the need to increase numbers and send out links agains the desire to connect one-on-one and keep the stream intimate is a definte juggling act. Part of being an Indie Author (the business owner) is being able to do that kind of juggle, though. It's definitely a learning process and some days I'm the teacher; others, the student!

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

[Serkan]

I use http://followerfilter.com/ for Searching User- Tweet RT and Favorite listing and deletion - Unfollower finding an deletion. Even the site is new, it works well!

Site also allows you to see any twitter user's (included yours) unfollowers, followers and followings without login.

Of course it's free and unlimited!

[R.A.]

I'm struggling with this exact thing! I want to engage and write about my real life, not just my book but my twitter feed is all book promotions. People don't interact. it's all about book sales for them. I keep posting stuff about myself but no one seems to care or notice.