I try to follow all the real people I can on Twitter. If I see you mentioned from one of my friends, I’m going to check you out. If you send a tweet to @philgerb, I’m going to check you out. If I do a search for something and you come up, I’m going to check you out.
I will not follow you. And I thought I better let you know why.
1) You don’t have a real avatar – PLEASE upload a picture before you follow anyone. The default looks spammy and fake…and that’s NOT who you are if you’re a real person. I won’t follow you if you don’t have a real avatar.
2) You have more than 4 consonants or vowels in a row in your handle – Are you a real person if you create a handle like @jklsafjlk35 or @3523434kjklsa ? NOPE. I’m not going to follow you.
3) You have nothing in your profile, or worse, you have “Make money online” or “Buy Acai Berries” or “Want to buy Amway/Avon/Mary Kay/insert MLM here” in your profile – If you can’t make time to personalize your 160 characters in your profile, I’m not going to follow you. If you can only talk about these impersonal things in your profile, I’m not going to follow you!
4) You last 4 tweets are repeat tweets or are nothing but affiliate links – No RT (re-tweets) but repeat tweets. A tweet that says “Check out http://tr.im/mRuj” 5 times is NOT doing anyone any good and I’m not going to follow you! And if all your links point to affiliate marketing sites, I’m not going to follow you.
5) You follow 600 people but only 3 people follow you – If you are this out of whack, unless you JUST STARTED on Twitter, I’m not going to follow you!
6) 600 people follow you, but you only follow 3 people – You might be the world’s smartest person, but if you’re not listening to what other people say (even if you’re following me), you’re not as smart as you think. If your balance is this far out of whack, I’m not going to follow you!
7) I can’t see any @anyone messages on your page (and I may even scroll a few pages to see them). If you’re not into conversation, you and I probably can’t be friends. I LOVE CONVERSATION AND CONNECTION and so do most humans. If you don’t like conversation and connection, I’m not going to follow you.
8 ) You hashtag spam – If I click on the trends on the right side of Twitter and I see you are writing tweets with #spam #spam #spam #spam, I’m not going to follow you.
9) Someone I trust said not to follow you – If someone I already am following calls you a bad name, I’m probably not going to follow you. I may keep my eye on you, but I won’t follow you, at least not until I’ve built up some trust with you.
10) Your follow message got lost in my inbox – I get a lot of e-mails and sometimes, I lose the automatic Twitter messages I get when folks follow me. If that has happened to you, just send me an @philgerb, and I’ll be following you in a giffy.
Why don’t YOU follow more people?
Inspired by some recent Tweets by @rockintherobin
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