I’ve struggled with the follow and non-follow issues that come up daily on Twitter and other “social media” services. I seem to adjust my thinking daily. Clients and partners are always asking… “What’s the best practice?”. Here are some thoughts on unfollowing the noise in social media.
Many of the respected gurus and marketing “pros” advise to follow anyone that follows you, “it grows your network”. If all I need is a larger network then I have millions of connections sitting right here in the white pages… however, because I have their contact info does not mean that I have a network or that it’s even a meaningful “connection”.
I’ve been in the process for the past month of dwindling the people I follow down. I haven’t gotten far because I want to look at each one and know if I can relate to this person or if we have a shared interest. I’ve also been on the fence and then last week I saw that Robert Scobel dropped everyone (107,000) he was following! I’m not that drastic but was impressed with his decision (also note that he has picked up following others again but only those he felt added to his network or interests).
Let me give you the #1 reason people don’t unfollow others… because they unfollow you and you lose followers. All of a sudden you don’t have 10,000 followers you only have 8,000– the horror!!! Sad to say but Twitter has become an egotistical game!
And now you ask, “how do you know what’s going on if you don’t follow a lot of people…” well simple. Search. I use Seesmic Desktop and the built-in, real-time search let’s me keep up with what I want not others. Amazing concept, eh?
I’m not telling you to unfollow everyone, I’m suggesting you re-evaluate your practices. You will be better focused and able to manage your time better by unfollowing the noise.