Reasons I will unfollow you on twitter

Following a post on connecting or more accurately not connecting on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, this prompted me to write a short series on other social networking tools.

Please read this in the context of how and why I use Twitter.

My/ our context for Twitter

For me and the RapidBI team, Twitter is both a marketing and engagement tool. I (RapidBI) use twitter to reach potential customers or website users. My interest in you is as much about what you can offer me to help and grow as a professional, and how you can help my business in your small way by promoting or retweeting some of our posts (bonus points if you RT a blog post of ours). I will of course promote our products, as well as other interesting blogs/ articles from peers. I also tweet information I hope will be of value to people that are interested in HR, Training, Learning & Development, Organizatiional Development, Management, Leadership, Business etc..

Remember that I do not need to follow you to read your tweets. there are many ways to do this including having #hashtag searches on your desktop application, or searching for keywords…

Reasons to unfollow

A few the reasons why I may unfollow you:

1. You have not tweeted for 5 or more weeks – if you are not tweeting are you reading?
2. You only tweet links – I’m in this for business and relationships – if all you tweet are links, how can I engage with you? plus its spam if affiliate links all the time
3. You keep @mentioning me with links that I have not requested or they are not part of a conversation we are having – that is spam!
4. You keep sending me unsolicited DM’s that contain links.. that is spam!
5. Your tweets are unprofessional or NSFW (Not safe for work) – I use twitter for business so need to manage our reputation
6. Not a human, If you’re upbeat all the time, or never show that you are upset (human!), it’s a clear sign that you’re not a real person. I want to see some balance. The real, authentic you
7. Unnecessary anger or swearing – sure be real/ authentic. but have some balance
8. You don’t engage with me either by talking or occasionally re-tweeting or providing a #ff to your followers
9. Politics or religion – sorry but this has too much room for arguments – so I won’t engage – if you try to get me in on this too often well…
10. You only tweet links to your own site – don’t be selfish!
11. You use truetwit – I cannot pass this easily using my mobile devices – so I pass!
12. It’s about social media not “social ME-dia” … engage please don’t just promote
13. You are a mashable or other rss feed publisher– please – stop being a re-publisher and give me YOUR thoughts & views – I will follow RSS if I am interested, but not individuals that broadcast several feeds
14. You try to be clever, by sending too many #FF or #hashtag tweets with multiple names in a single tweet and tweets which promote other people in bulk etc – over automation does this – be human
15. You keep asking for rt’s to get more followers

Power of the crowd…

I also asked my followers and some of the first responses are included in the article below.

Difference – it is interesting and exciting to know that we all have different reasons/ motivations for unfollowing, This I suspect is based on our reasons and method of using twitter. There is no right or wrong reason for unfollow, other than purely people don’t follow back – I don’t! and for me that is not a valid reason to unfollow – there are people I follow that don’t follow back. We should only follow people that add value, and just because you add value to me, does not mean I add value to you.

By following some of the information given here you can minimise the risks of being unfollowed, however

It all depends on your reasons for being on Twitter, what you want to achieve and your plan or strategy.. you do have a plan or strategy for using twitter and other social media don’t you….

@HRUnique Lisa Windsor – @RapidBI So far, I have unfollowed for offensive language, biblical quotes and comments about tv!
@AngieStrader AngieStrader – @RapidBI I unfollow when I see excessive auto tweets for an MLM. They just clutter my feed and I hate clutter!
@GenPubs Patricia Venables – @RapidBI Anyone who thinks it’s clever to use bad language and swear words. I’m old fashioned!
@moxby_design Martin Oxby – @RapidBI unfollow with inappropriate profile imgs, spammy links/posts or if it appears most tweets are automated :-)
@GrahamJHarris You Too Social Media – @rapidbi Foul language is top of my list. And I don’t follow people if they use TrueTwit. Thanks for asking this.
@BrendanD100 Brendan Dunne – @RapidBI Twitter is a social medium, if two tweeters are not listening to each other, there’s nothing social happening.
@Histerius histerius – @RapidBI a) no activity for weeks b) many spam retweets
@HR_Katherine Katherine Duff – @RapidBI I unfollow for lots of auto-tweets, excessive use of profanity, blatant broadcasting/no engagement & sometimes boring tweets! :)
@eiohel Miljenko Williams – @RapidBI I almost never do. If I do, it’s generally because Twitter does it by itself. And I am oblivious of it doing so, unfortunately.
@ajaybtraining Andy Blake – @RapidBI Constant self promotion, no interactions, dogmatic thinking all get me unfollowing…
@NerissaWilliams Nerissa Williams – @RapidBI lack of tweeting activity, automated “sales pitches” offensive content, general spamming and lack of engagement + discussion….
@mshawcoaching Madeleine Shaw – Unfolo 4 frequent crazE abbreviations 4 no rEson

Thanks for contributing.

What is interesting here is that there is a lot of common ground. So if you want to be unfollowed… follow the “guidelines” given here.

Authentic social media leadership

For me it is all about balance. If using twitter for business, show you are real, show you are human, show you are interested

Please feel free to add your own reasons for unfollowing below

Other (planned) titles in this min-series:

• Reasons why I will follow you
• Reasons why I will #ff you
• Reasons why I will RT you