To this day I avoid auto-following on Twitter and automatic Friending on Facebook.
Friends? I know many people who were eager to say “yes” to all requests for friends. They soon reached the magic 5000 number, when they couldn’t add more Friends. They realized that many existing Friends had no relationship to their businesses, but who’s got time to sort through 5000 names?
Therefore, when I get a Friend request, I assess the request in terms of my business. If there’s no obvious relationship, I ignore the request. I don’t use Facebook for personal connections and I encourage my own clients to set up separate accounts for business and personal relationships.
Twitter also places restrictions on the number of people you can follow. All too often, people will follow you and then un-follow almost immediately. As a result, you end up with many more “following” than “followers.” No problem till you follow 2000 people. Now your ratio gets constrained by the system. You’re allowed to follow just 10% more people than are following you. IF you are following 3300 people, you need to get more than 3000 followers. Otherwise the system sends you a rather strong message: “You are not allowed to follow more people at this time.”
Here are some of my criteria for “following back” on Twitter, i.e., reciprocating when someone follows me:
A photo or customized icon
A link to a live website
A clear indication of who they are and what they do
A balanced ratio of followers to following. Here’s how it works:
Following: 1992 Followers: 124
This Twitter user is just not attracting followers or else people are choosing to un-follow because the content is boring or (more likely) offensive in some way. When I visit that Twitterer’s home page, often I see a series of blatant sales messages, with nothing else.
Following: 101 Followers: 90,229
This person isn’t going to follow me back. If he’s initiated a request by following me, he’ll soon unfollow. If I have a ton of followers already, and these tweets seem interesting and informative, I may go for it. Otherwise, I risk upsetting my ratios and will be limited in my ability to follow people who are more likely to reciprocate.