UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging

Chapter 36. My Transparency on Twitter

WHEN I FIRST started getting some momentum on Twitter, gaining up to 500 new followers a day during the craziest of my tweeting addiction, I turned off notifications of new followers. I just could not keep up with them all. I then had a choice: become a Twitter Diva (or "Twiva" if you want to annoy the eggnog out of people) and not follow anyone back, or auto-follow everyone back who followed me. I picked the latter, because I figured it was a nice way to say thanks for following me, and hey, if they followed me they at least have that going for them.

This was a mistake for three reasons:

1. I followed back spammers and porn accounts and other undesirables. I have nothing against porn stars. I'm sure they wake up and put on their latex pants like the rest of us, but I had no desire to hear about the sequel to Long Dong Silver in my tweet stream. Your profile page shows a collection of people you've recently begun to follow. Some of those profile pictures do not reflect fondly on your brand, and why are you following @WhipsAndChainsForMen anyway?

2. I ended up following 30,000 people. I barely look at my "All Tweets" screen. I removed it from TweetDeck. There is so much noise that I've had to make custom groups called "rockstars" and "awesomesauce" to read the tweets of people that I learn from or I know. I should have stayed selective in those I followed ...