Following people correctly on Twitter is an art. If you follow too few people, Twitter is a quiet, lonely place. If you follow too many, it can be overwhelming.
I have never followed many people on Twitter; I never felt the need to. However, earlier this year I made the conscious effort to follow more people and become more active. I went from following around 200 people to around 550. I generally followed people who replied to one of my tweets or those who followed me and seemed interesting.
In hindsight, it was a silly thing to do. My Twitter feed was soon overwhelmed with tweets from people that I had no relationship with. It was also filled with tweets from other people due to the popularity of retweeting. It felt like I was viewing someone else’s feed as I did not who these people were.
So last night I decided to rectify the situation. I went through the list of all the people I followed and unfollowed anyone who I had no connection with. The number quickly dropped down to 242. This number may drop even further over the next few days.
Instantly, Twitter became better. Infinitely better.
My home feed now lists of tweets of people I want to hear from. It is the way Twitter should be.
I cannot relate to people who follow thousands of people on Twitter. Even if you use software like Hootsuite or categorise everyone into lists, it is still unmanageable.
The main reason for following thousands of people online is to gain thousands of followers in return. The problem is that the people who follow you have no interest in what you are saying.
Granted, if you play the numbers game, you will increase traffic through Twitter a little. However, you will get so much more from Twitter if you actually have conversations with people that matter rather than blasting out links to your blog and hoping people click and share.
If you are a Twitter user, I encourage you to take a step back and review how you use Twitter. Are you getting the most from the service or do you think that you have got caught up in the numbers game?
As always, thoughts, comments and biscuits are all welcome :)
Thanks for reading.
Kevin