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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I’d consider it a primary source of my business, and I spend about 60 minutes or so a day on Twitter, sometimes even more. If your business relies on Twitter as a primary source of advertising specials, or if your services relies on Twitter to communicate to your customers, or worse, if your business relies on Twitter for ALL it’s business, you’re probably not very happy when Twitter service fails.

It’s a free service. It’s GOING to fail sometimes. I wish that weren’t true, but it is.

What do you do with your business when Twitter fails?

5 things you can do when Twitter fails

Pick up the phone – If your phone line is working, call the customers you know were waiting to hear from you. You have the element of surprise on your side, and you might just get voicemail, or you might get an opportunity to deepen your relationship with someone and solidify in their mind why YOUR BUSINESS is the right choice for their needs.

Hand write thank you notes – Take some time to thank a few new customers, a few existing customers, or someone who referred business to you. Bonus points if you have cards pre-stamped and hand return addressed.

Email a personal note – Instead of blasting out a message that folks may or may not read, why not pick 5 people out to contact with a longer personal e-mail, asking them how you can help them, sharing an article that might help their business, or a celebratory birthday or anniversary greeting.

Write an article – Take some time to think about your favorite customers or your favorite customer’sproduct/service. Is there anyone who might benefit from that product or service that doesn’t know about it already? Do a quick case study of how they are successful and send it to your contact at the company, asking for permission to share it with others.

Create your newsletter – You are doing a periodic newsletter, right? Why not take a few minutes to set up the next one. Write the introduction, set the theme, find some images, and maybe even write the articles. It all depends how long you’re going to be without your beloved Twitter service, so work until it’s done, and use the time later in the week for more Twitter action.

All of these things can be done whether Twitter fails or not.

I’d encourage you to not put all your eggs in one basket and do these as part of your integrated marketing plan. And if you need help creating that plan, I’d love to work with you to create and implement a strategy that can help you make it great!

What do YOU do when Twitter fails?

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Example 1: Facebook Fail

On Facebook, Dan Leone, a now former employee of the Philadelphia Eagles, posted this status update:

“Dan is ******* devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver…Dam Eagles are Retarded.”

Result: FIRED from working with the Philadelphia Eagles! DOH!

Example 2: Twitter Twit

On Twitter, one job seeker who was offered a job Tweeted this:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

To which someone at Cisco responded:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

FAIL! No job!

In this economy (and with the Internet’s memory) it’s going to be a LONG time before either person finds a new one.

So what can we learn from this?

First, people are listening to what you have to say. If you use Google Alerts, or do a Twitter search, or watch your Facebook news feed, you can see what folks are saying in near real-time.

Second, everything you say online is captured FOREVER and it will be re-broadcast all over the world. The Cisco guy now has pages and pages of “re-tweets” for the phrase “cisco fatty” and there are 309 (soon to be 310) Google blog searches for “cisco fatty.”

Here’s the lesson:

Think twice before saying “Sally is a fat head” or “I hate my boss Phil!” Folks are listening. You probably are friends with someone who knows someone who knows someone who is friends with your boss, your co-worker, or your HR director.

What can YOU learn from this?

Sources:

• Facebook source
• Twitter source

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