Please, Don’t Let Me Know When You (Un)Follow Me
Two quick pieces of advice about follow/unfollow etiquette:
- You don’t have to let somebody know when you’re following them. Twitter does that for you, and if the person has opted out of these emails, they’ve done so for a reason.
- You don’t have to let somebody know that you’re about to unfollow them. Even if you tell them why, what are they supposed to do about it?
BONUS: Never tell somebody that you’re thinking about following them. What in blue blazes is that supposed to mean?
For many new users of the service, sending these kinds of messages seems polite, but it’s absolutely unnecessary, and can sometimes be quite irritating. This is certainly the case if the announcement is in any way automated.
It’s cool that you’re using an external tool to find people to follow, but if you want to get noticed then make the proper attempt to engage. And if you absolutely must send a message when you start to follow somebody, make it as creative and original as possible. Certainly, never send automated messages as they come – be unique.
Otherwise, here’s the irony: you’ll simply get lost in the stream with everybody else.
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Loading ...
I have sent messages that I was considering following someone. Here’s what it means: it means you’ve done some interesting tweets, but there’s too much noise in your tweet stream for me to add you to my list. (That is, in fact, how I feel about your tweets. Your blog is really interesting, though. I follow your blog rather closely.)
You think that’s impolite? Deal with it, it’s feedback. Some of us use Twitter deliberately: to follow the thoughts of people who interest us. There are some interesting people out there who drive me nuts with their inane tweets about silly things like what they are friggin’ eating at this moment. A little feedback might help them. And if it doesn’t, oh well, I tried.
I use Twitter in a very deliberate way, but we see things very differently (and I think have a different idea of what constitutes signal and noise.)
To me, suggesting to somebody that you’ll only follow them if they make changes to the way they tweet is not only (IMO) impolite, it’s actually arrogant. If somebody has very few followers or people are unfollowing in their droves, then there is perhaps some logic in those that are unfollowing them suggesting why. But in those cases chances are the person is acting in a certain way with intent and likely does not care.
Telling somebody who has many followers that they need to change for YOU to follow them is almost always going to fall on deaf ears, and with good reason. If they change for you, what about everybody else? Chances are those existing followers either like or are not concerned about the way that person interacts with Twitter.
My personal Twitter feed is majority signal, with the rest replies. The bulk of what I tweet are links to external content. There’s very, very little noise. According to Twitalyzer, it’s 83.5% signal, rating as ‘astonishingly high’.
http://twitalyzer.com/twitalyzer/profile.asp?u=Sheamus&p=13
I’m not sure what you actually think noise is, but you don’t find a lot of it @sheamus!
If you count replies as noise, then you’re going to have an issue with virtually everybody who engages on the network, unfortunately.
I agree with Sheamus, that does seem arrogant and even if it’s meant as valuable feedback not likely to go over well.
I can understand telling somebody why you’re unfollowing to make a statement – i.e. somebody who posts a vile, racist tweet but if it’s just because your styles don’t mesh, I’m not sure I see anything coming out of that but potential hurt feelings.
.-= Tracy´s last blog ..Why I Shouldn’t be the Good Mood Blogger =-.
This gave me a bit of a giggle, when I was a new to Twitter I had no idea about the auto-DMs so I thought folks were sending them to me and that was just what one did after following – kind of like some people write on your FB wall when you first friend each other as a Hey! How ya doing? gesture.
When I caught on, I was so embarrassed at sending people DMs that they probably thought were auto generated!
.-= Tracy´s last blog ..Why I Shouldn’t be the Good Mood Blogger =-.