Many “Twitter Experts” have different theories when it comes to following people on Twitter. You have users like Guy Kawasaki who go by the “let’s follow everyone who follows me” rule and then you have other users like Conan O’Brien who followed nobody until he started following a random person (and subsequently changed her life). There is no arguing that both of these individuals have seen great success on Twitter, but have both incorporated a different mindset when it came to following other users. The question of which one is right and which one is wrong is difficult to answer since both have a substantial following base. Granted, they were both well known before Twitter which makes it a lot easier for them to gain a high number of followers. Either way, the question of “how should I go about following other users” doesn’t have a right or wrong answer as different strategies work for different people. The messages being tweeted out and how you use Twitter to communicate with others is what truly determines your overall success. That being said, I still follow some personal guidelines when it comes to following other users which I’m sharing below. This doesn’t necessarily mean that following these guidelines will vastly improve your success on Twitter, but I’ve found this process to work for me the best.
1. Frequent Spammers Never Get Followed – If you want to send me an automated DM that promotes your business, fine. If you send me ten of them, not fine. If an account is flooding my Twitter stream with self-promotional garbage or my Direct Messages with the same type of content, they will be unfollowed, blocked, and reported for spam. They are not contributing anything worthwhile and I could honestly care less whether or not they follow me back. Plus, there tweets could potentially prevent me from seeing a worthwhile tweet.
2. Interesting Tweets = Follow: Might sound obvious, but if I find an account’s tweets interesting, I will follow that person. Some users will avoid following these types of accounts if it doesn’t guarantee a follow back. This kind of mindset misses the point of Twitter altogether. Twitter isn’t about growing followers, it’s about communicating, learning, and in some cases entertaining yourself.
3. Users Who Follow Me First (Varies from User to User): I follow users who follow me first generally 50% of the time. If someone is following me because they seem like they are generally interested in what I have to tweet about, aren’t a spammer, and are communicating (not just self promoting) I will almost always follow that person back. If, however, their motives seem entirely selfish and have a tweet stream flooded with spam, I will usually not follow back.
4. Friends, Family, and “Real Life” Connections: Just like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter can be an effective tool to connect with people you already know or have recently met. If you met somebody at a networking event, I recommend finding them on Twitter, following them, and then sending them a quick hello. In my opinion, this is the most effective (and simplest) way to grow your total number of quality followers.
5. Industry Experts: This can fall under guideline 2 (interesting tweets), but I follow a select few individuals I few as “industry experts” pertaining to Internet Marketing (especially Social Media and SEO). This approach has helped to keep me abreast of the latest news and information pertaining to my industry and has proven Twitter’s value as an educational tool. What works even better is categorizing these users via Twitter lists or custom lists on TweetDeck.
6. Brand Ambassadors: If a user tweets positively about a business whose Twitter account I’m managing, I will not only reach out to that user, but will follow them as well. This allows me to easily see any future brand mentions by this particular user. There are many Twitter alert tools that exist that will automatically e-mail you every time your brand is mentioned via Twitter. If someone misspells your brand, however, this will generally go undetected in a Twitter Alert service. I implement the same strategy for individuals negatively tweeting about a brand I’m managing as well.
As mentioned, there is no right or wrong when it comes to following other users on Twitter. As long as you are effectively communicating and informing on Twitter, your followers will grow naturally.
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