Who Should You Follow On Twitter?
Follow Me On Twitter
The question of the ages, Who Should You Follow On Twitter? When I first started using Twitter it was more out of curiosity, to see what this new Web 2.0 idea was about. I didn’t pay much attention to it. In fact I think I belonged to Twitter for a year before I even filled out my profile. My first encounter told me it was a bunch of lonely people trying to inflict their loneliness onto others: “going to the Dr’s today-my back is killing me” #back pain 
Then the day finally arrived when several online friends harassed me into going back to see what had happened in 1 year’s time. From there…
It rapidly turned into more and more follows to keep up to date on people I had no idea who they were. I would follow anyone and everyone without giving any thought as to who I was actually following. If they followed me, I followed them back. Then one day about 3 weeks ago came the thought…
Who Should You Follow On Twitter?
I’m not sure there is a absolutely correct answer to that question, but I do think we should set some guidelines for ourselves as to who we should follow and why.
How Many Should You Follow?
This should be one of the first questions to ask, “How many do I want to follow?”. Do you want to keep it small and intimate and only follow people you know personally? Or, are you a curious and extroverted type and like to know, learn, or be updated about everything under the sun and follow in the tens of thousands?
Your Interests
The popularity of Twitter has nearly everyone marching in the Twitter Parade. You can now follow most any news source, sports team, favorite celebrity, and even a nobody running for president (it worked). What interests you, what would you like to keep up on, and what really matters to you? This can help you decide on who to follow.
I Have Something To Say.
Twitter has evolved into the mega marketing tool. You can deliver your message, idea, thoughts, and products now to the masses with a simple tweet. If you have something to deliver, who you follow should be looked at as if I follow them they will more than likely return the favor. This is important because if you have them following you, you now have someone to deliver your message to. The more folks you have following you the more folks you can reach with your message. So, whether you’re pitching a product or championing a cause, the more followers you have the more folks hear your message.
Who Are You?
Along with asking who should I follow you have to ask who shouldn’t I follow. As with any great tool or invention there are those who will use it for dastardly objectives. You need to be concerned with who you follow as there is increasingly those who are using Twitter to scam, phish, and spam you. Always take a look at their profile, website and compare how many are following them to how many they are following. This can often be a caution flag for someone you’d want to avoid. Having said that, there are many where the ratio of following to followers is heavily skewed and they are still okay to follow, just use your best judgment.
I’m, also, always cautious about folks without a photo or custom avatar, no website or a one squeeze page website trying to sell an affiliate product. Nothing personal, it just seems to obvious that they’re on Twitter to constantly push the pitch.
Same Interests
Then who should you follow? Folks like yourself. Whatever hobby, profession, interest, industry, or field your in you should be following others who have the same interests. This is important because Twitter is the way to keep current on what’s new and hot. You can also learn, teach, and share ideas with folks similar to yourself.
These are basic guidelines as to who you should follow. If you’ve been using Twitter for any amount of time you understand how addictive following can be. It can become a huge time-waster for those folks that need to be focusing on their business. It’s a very comfortable distraction.
If you take anything away from this it would be to be careful who you follow. Twitter is fertile ground for abuse. Checkout who you follow and like anything don’t give out private information.
Final Word
I don’t follow everyone that follows me for some or all of the reasons given here. The biggest reason I might not return a follow is it doesn’t appear that I have much if anything in common with them. Or, I can’t tell if we have common interests because they haven’t completed their profile and/or they don’t have a website/blog where I can get a feeling of what interests they have. However, I’m thankful for anyone that follows me and I’m sure that most are great people.
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