There are people on Twitter who attempt “incentivize” potential followers by adding the fact that they “follow back”. There are, on the surface, quite a few things wrong with this concept.
- If you’re following people merely to try and pad your own follower count, you are, in effect, diluting your influence, not strengthening it.
- There’s a good chance that people that follow you back solely because you followed them may not be all that in what you have to say.
While I appreciate each and every one of my followers, there’s a good possibility I may not follow back all of them. I choose who I follow by what interests me, what someone has to offer that I can learn from, and people that are sharing quality information that I likely can’t find anywhere else. In other words, I follow people for new opinions and new perspectives.
Some people go so far as to unfollow people who haven’t followed them back after a certain amount of time. This seems sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I am constantly trying to grow my influence and build new followers on Twitter, but I would much rather know that someone followed me because they were interested in what I had to say and not just as a second thought because I just chose to follow them. I know that if someone actually took the time to see what I had to say and then decided to follow me, that my reach and ability to connect with those followers will be far greater.
Social media is all about engagement and, especially on Twitter, if you have 5,000 followers that skim past your Tweets you’re not going to be nearly as effective as if you have 1,000 followers that you are genuinely engaged with.
Once you’re able to stop focusing on the amount of followers you have and start focusing on the quality of content and engagement you have with those followers you’ll find that your follower count will steadily grow, slowly and organically, which anyone will tell you is the best way to build a community like-minded people to share ideas and create a successful engagement.
What’s your follower philosophy? Do you automatically follow back everyone that follows you or are you more selective?
About James Poling
[...] the past my argument for not following someone back was that you should grow your Twitter list organically, following people you come across naturally and who you are interested in. That way, when you find [...]