There are a lot of ‘how to’ guides on how to gain followers and become more popular on Twitter. Being popular is very last century of course. In the future privacy, disconnecting and silence will become hip again.
At least, that is what some people pray for.
For those of you who get nervous of a crowd of hungry attention seekers confronting you with every update you post, or a lack of updates, here is a guide on How to Lose Followers & Alienate Friends, on Twitter:
1: no avatar
Oscar Wilde said: “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances”. If you are still using the standard Twitter Avatar (pictured here) than you are REALLY limiting your chances of getting followers. Want to lose a few followers? Revert to standard avatar and watch them go…
2: no biography
I’m sure you think it looks all mystical and secretive to not say too much about yourself. Bravo. Unfortunately it just means I have no idea what you do and what you are about. Following you? If I need mystery in my live I will watch the X Files. Thank you.
3: ugly profile
Nothing says ‘I don’t take this seriously’ as a standard twitter account. Are you planning on seriously using Twitter? Then go and choose a different background! Really, anything except the standard background is better than the standard background!
4: not enough updates
If you don’t send out regular updates why should I keep following you? Try to at least post once every other day. It isn’t that hard and will help you get into the habit of thinking about it.
5: too many updates
Watching a ball game? At a conference? Want to share what you see? Cool. But don’t send out a tweet every 30 seconds that only interests the 10 other followers who are also at the event you are visiting. Have some consideration with people not experience the same event. To them you are just spamming. UNFOLLOW!
6: too detailed updates
Yes, I’m interested in your life. Just not every single detail. Drinking coffee? Watching TV? taking a sh*t? Great for you but please fight the urge to share it all with your 10,000 followers. Don’t bore me!
7: not interesting enough updates
Before you post ANYTHING think about this: Will this tweet Inspire, amuse or inform my followers? Is it funny, different and valuable? If the answer is yes, go ahead and publish. Otherwise, don’t bother. You have an audience of eager listeners. What would you do if you were invited to a conference and had to speak before an audience of 500 people? How many followers do you have? See what I’m getting at? Be interesting!
8: more following than followers
If you follow *many* more people than you are being followed by you look desperate. Sure, you think you are just REALLY interested. Unfortunately it doesn’t come over like that. There are lots of conflicting opinions on how many people you can follow. Is the conversation still interesting if you follow 50,000 people? I doubt it but won’t stop you (Twitter will: you can only follow 2000 people, unless they all follow you back) but I wouldn’t recommend it.
9: auto-welcome direct messages
More and more people treat the automatic Direct Message as a perfect excuse to immediately unfollow you. Want to personally welcome everybody who follows you? Then do it personally. Never automate a personal message. It is a contradictio in terminus and will only anger your potential new friends.
10: Start unfollowing yourself
This must be the best way to lose followers! It is one thing to break up with someone but unfollowing is considered the ultimate insult to some people. I recently unfollowed 350 people to get back to 150 people just so I could keep up Twitter again. The result was several really angry letters, an advertiser who pulled her ads and hundreds of Followers who noticed what I was doing and unfollowed me before I could unfollow them. Amazing! Announce in advance that you are going to unfollow and people will unfollow you just to make sure THEY are the ones breaking up.
11: NSFW Tweets
On the web anything goes, right? Wrong. A lot of your followers won’t appreciate you tweeting about sex, drugs and rock and roll. Good chance that your other followers will love you for it of course. You can’t please em all! Just be aware of it.
Remember: Anything you say and do on Twitter can, and will, be held against you in the court of public opinions.
How have you lost followers? Said anything you regretted later?
Let us know so we can learn from you…
UPDATED:
12: only mention your own content
@Roy gives us number 12. So true..
13: spam your followers with Spymaster invites
@lisa617 has number 13:
14: let us know!
I find myself guessing why people are unfollowing me. Although having lot’s of followers on twitter is not my primary goal in using twitter. In a strange way it feels good to see people are following you » so loosing them kind of feels disappointing.
I’ll remind myself that people are unfollowing me because of my tweets, which probably lack the information they were hoping to hear. So it’s due to my actions, not to my personality.
I tweet about my work and what I’m passionate about. 90% of that is The Next Web and TwitterCounter. You aren’t surprised that Arrington is posting a lot about Techcrunch, even on his personal Twitter account right?
But I do agree with you that if you start considering my tweets about my work as spam it is time to move on. Or set-up a filter that filters out all tweet containing links to The Next Web. Oh damn, can’t do that yet! :-)
Sure, try:
TwitterKarma: http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/
ReFollow: http://refollow.com/refollow/index.html
Both work very well…
Please check all your tweets in the last 24 hours.
90% is NextWeb spam.
How come you still have 1700 followers then? I guess your rules don’t make sense. :-)
Sanne, Beware sneaky unfollowers. Boris may have had a good reason to unfollow people, but most are out to pad their numbers or look like a twitter star and pad their ego.
It is a stupid, dirty, “marketing” ploy by a big number of twitter users: follow thousands, get thousands of followers, then unfollow everyone to look like people give a crap what they say.
Block sneaky unfollowers and do not take it personal.
Someone should start a list of them. I would pay $100 for that list.
interesting information. i better watch my back or soon my follower number might be reduced to half.
how can i unfollow those who are not following me? can you plz give a solution?
thanks. i’ll try them now…
I recently started blocking some of my followers (and I don’t have that many) to get rid of the “will follow anyone to get followers” people. If I can’t think of a good reason why this person is following me (based on their profile) then I have no problem with doing that.
I can’t even keep up with following 100-150 people properly. Why would you want thousands? I would much prefer quality over quantity in my followers and the people I follow.
Too many updates (basically drowning out everyone else) and low-quality updates are the main reasons I unfollow people.
Lets just say that when I see an account with 18 followers who follows 2000 people I get suspicious…
Done.
I think #8 is bogus. Is there really a “science” to this? I am finding “twitter research” conclusory statements, of which there are many, amusing and alarming at the same time.
#8 needs to be modified to say “following *many* more people than followers”. All twitter users when first starting will have more people they follow than who follow them. It’s just natural.
I do agree, though, that anyone who thinks they can really follow more than about 50 people is either crazy or needs to get a real life. :) Personally, I limit mine to 50 and now unfollow 1 whenever I pick one up.
Everything you wrote Boris is true — 1st I hate users without avatar — 2nd I hate ugly profiles
So people use a little imagination
Greeting from Croatia ( @sivinjski )
Agreed on most, but not on NR 4. There is no (mental or otherwise) ‘costs’ for following someone who doesn’t update. If you post a lot, it’s an effort to read it all. If you only post seldom, there is no reason to unfollow, as not reading doesn’t take any effort. Why would you unfollow those people?
Everyone spouting the non sense that you can not keep up with thousands of followers is just lazy or does not put much time into twitter.
I keep up with multiple accounts and thousands of followers. I answer every @ reply, retweet my favorite tweeps, and interact every single day with many of my followers.
I don’t read every tweet, but I read many of them.
I manage my accounts personally and without any twitter software. BUT For those who are hurting their business because they can only keep up with 150 “friends”, try one of the many twitter aps that let you organize your tweeps and read your “favorites” only.
You have no idea how much more powerful your account will be when you get over your ego and become a “Mutual” Tweeter.
Twitter is business and pleasure for me and what a pleasure it is!
Follow or block me at @NoLuckNeeded
Top 10 Signs you’re a Twit on Twitter
**#1 is for Boris :)
Pronunciation: \ˈtwit\ Function: noun
Definitions: 1 A foolish or annoying person on Twitter
2 a person not worth following on Twitter
You may be a twit if more than 2 of these descibe you:
10. You have ever been unfollowed by a blood relative.
9. Your Follwer count is negative.
8. You have been unfollowed by @guykawasaki
7. You have ever sent an auto Direct Message with a link and “Want 16,000 followers in 30 days”.
6. You have tweeted multiple times about your follower count.
5. You send an auto DM saying check out my blog with a link.
4. You never reply to your @ replies.
3. You tweet only to celebrities who never tweet back.
2. You only tweet to tweople with more followers than you.
1. You follow less than 10% of the tweople following you.
I am @betsyanne and @nontrads on Twitter. I think it all comes down to whether or not you want to just talk to friends (and then you can go private and not allow followers unless you OK them…) or if you want to follow many people. You can put your favorite people on “Favorites” and just see what they are saying. It has helped me a lot.
“4. You never reply to your @ replies.”
I read them all, but there is an automated program that limits your tweet to 80 and adds 4 @ names after the tweet. Now why would I reply to them?
I do reply to any actual requests for information or interaction sent to @. As to DMs, I stopped reading them. Most seem to be automated. Many are validation apps (and if you think I am a bot, that just means you don’t care enough to read my tweets, you want me to do your work and prove to you I am worth following) And many say “Interesting Tweets, I will follow closely” Coming from someone following 32,000 people, there is no way they’re are going to follow mine closely. Why would they say that?
I wonder how many tweets are just automated or scheduled. Twitter is like ‘My bot follows your bot, so have your bot follow me back.’ 90% seems to go to Tweet bots you can buy, Forex, or some other business offer. I cannot imagine anyone with more than 50 followers and following 50 being able to have intelligent conversations except by chance. (which when they happen is nice.)
A person can spend hours on Twitter clicking tweeted links. Some go to interesting news or blog posts, but while reading that, you’ll miss a bunch of tweets. It becomes almost a random thing to click a link. That could be part of the charm of the app, it is sort of like roulette, if a news item or blog post happens to be tweeted while I am watching, and I happen to click it, I am rewarded with an interesting read. (Or find out it is easy and quick to make $576,000.00 dollars on the internet.) Lol.
Lists will allow you to ‘pretend to follow people with out having to be subjected to their tweets. Do you suppose that same thing will happen to you? Imagine hitting the button that lists how many lists you are on and you have 3,000,000 ‘followers’, but no one is reading your tweets.
All lists will be doing is changing the focus from “How many followers do you have?” to “How many list are you on?” (The same result could be achieved for having a separate Twitter account for each part of your life.)
Mark
Want to report sneaky unfollowers and blockers?
Let me know!
http://listorious.com/TwtJudge/worst-twitters
http://twitter.com/TwtJudge/worst-twitters
yes, you are right that following lot of people on twitter is not the prime reason to be on Twitter.The main thing is to convey message to lot of people at the same time.