Why, How and Who Do You Follow?

Today, a quick tweet to praise @stkildsfc for following their fans caused a flurry of  replies and direct messages.   Am I doing it incorrectly, should I be following everyone?

Tue Feb 9 11.24  @stkildafc:   We are! We follow everyone that follows the mighty Saints on Twitter! RT @its_ISPY: @stkildafc I think u should be following me #gosaints

Tue Feb 9 11.24 @codenamemax:  Good to see the Saints follow everyone that follows them on Twitter! Must make followers feel included.

Tue Feb 9 11.46   @Byroncooke:  @codenamemax Michelle should I be following everyone that follows me? I should have thought of that. Please teach me the “tweetiquette”!!

Tue Feb 9 17.00 @codenamemax:  @Byroncooke will email you. But in the case of a footy club, it’s about “being included” so i think it makes you feel “part of the club”

At the time, I was wishing my football club @hawthornfc, paid up 2010 member, would give me the privilege of being followed by them.  @Stkildafc just seem to have their social media working perfectly.  I am not even a fan of the saints, but definitely a fan of their social media department and they follow me.   Their fans must feel right in the inner sanctum, being part of it, (footy lingo!) not just getting the occasional tweet.  They must feel wanted.

I went looking for an article with a brief explanation about following.   The following article suggested that you feel that if people follow you, you’d like to follow back, but you’d first like to (manually) view their twitter profiles’.

If you can be established as a certain team’s supporter then I feel they should follow you back.

Article: graymatterminute: Why, How and Who Do You Follow?

Maybe not everyone would call the choice to click follow or unfollow a “strategy,” but when you click that button, it’s a conscious choice. Even setting up one of those awful auto-DM services is a conscious choice, and I would thereby suggest, a strategy.

“It’s not about the numbers.”

Baloney, I say. While I may not care how many followers I have, I do care who I follow. And I can’t help but notice their numbers. Who of us doesn’t look at a person’s “numbers” when reviewing his/her twitter profile. (Auto-DMers excluded, of course.)

Here are a few follow strategies I’ve identified in my twitter travels…

THE AUTO-FOLLOW STRATEGY

APPLICATION: You have 10,000 followers and the number grows every day. No way you could respond personally. It just doesn’t scale.

PROS: Time-efficient

CONS: Impersonal

TOOLS: Socialtoo.com

THE EVEN-STEVEN FOLLOW STRATEGY

APPLICATION: A) You feel that if people follow you, you’d like to follow back, but you’d first like to (manually) view their twitter profiles to determine if the mutual follow will be mutually beneficial. AND/OR, B) you want to follow people ONLY if they follow you back and you (may or may not) want to automate that process.

PROS: A) Improves the quality of your personal twitter community and offers the opportunity to send a personal Thank You DM, which can lead to some great extended conversations; B) Nice even numbers, process can be automated

CONS: A) Time-consuming if manual; B) Questionable quality if automated

TOOLS: A) You and your computer; B) Socialtoo.com

THE DOUBLE TAKE FOLLOW STRATEGY

APPLICATION: I had at first suspected hubris until I inquired further on this one. Turns out that some people whose numbers are heavy on the followers side and light on the follow side only follow back people who @, DM or RT them. So you can get their attention, and they may be more than willing to follow back or connect via email, but it’s a 2-step outreach for you either way.

PROS: Time-efficient

CONS: One-sided

TOOLS: With @, DM and RT alerts via tweetdeck or email alerts viatweetbeep you get a ping when you are mentioned

THE UNEQUIVOCALLY UNRECIPROCATED FOLLOW STRATEGY

APPLICATION: UberTwitterati and VIPs want to provide you with their insights but have no interest in following just anyone. That is, why follow? Why not lead? (It’s all the rage, these days.)

PROS: A very uncrowded twitter stream

CONS: A very unrequited exchange

TOOLS: Unecessary

THE RANDOM FOLLOW STRATEGY

APPLICATION: Spam.

PROS: None

CONS: Bad Karma

TOOLS: The people who do this

Those are my observations. Personally, I opt for balance in my follow strategy. I still look for quality new people to follow and if someone follows me, I still manually check every twitter profile before I follow back. If I choose not to follow someone back, then I would find it more than reasonable for that person to stop following me, if they so choose. I’m in this for the give and take. I am as delighted to Retweet as I am to be Retweeted.  I realize that I’m not going to have regular conversations with every single person in my twitter community, but I know they’re there because we have something in common and the door to direct two-way communication remains wide open…just like in real life.

So what’s your twitter follow strategy? What are the pros and cons you face? What tools do you use to make it all work?

Just don’t tell me you don’t look at the numbers. Because I’m not buyin’ it. The numbers count. And it should be clear by now that I’mnot talking about quantity.