Life will teach everything

Avoid being unfollowed on Twitter

It’s pretty easy to unfollow someone on Twitter. That’s both a good and scary thing.

Getting Twitter followers is half the battle. But hanging on to them is just as important – especially because it’s the most engaged tweeters (or tweeple) who are the most valuable for helping you get your message out. They’re the ones who are paying attention, and who will reply, retweet and favorite you. These are the people you want to hang on to, not the spammy types who will follow anyone and then never pay attention to them or their tweets.

Engaged people do choose to unfollow sometimes – after all, they are paying attention! Here are some tips for keeping your most valuable Twitter followers happy and un-annoyed, so they won’t want to unfollow you.

 
#1 – Make sure your Twitter bio and tweets are on the same page.

If your bio says you’re an expert in underwater basket weaving, many people are going to follow you expecting tweets about underwater basket weaving. But if your tweets don’t deliver what they were hoping for – say you mostly tweet about what you ate for breakfast – you are bound to lose followers.

By the way, this is very similar to how you should do email marketing. If people sign up for emails about natural medicine, but you send them emails about weight loss products, many people are going to unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.

 
#2 – Don’t automatically DM (direct message) people when they follow you.

When I asked my own followers on Twitter (many of whom are online marketing and social media experts) what things would make them unfollow someone, this was the answer I heard most. For some people, nothing is more annoying than an auto DM that sounds canned and artificial. Social media should be social and human after all, right?

 
#3 – Don’t have apps tweet for you, unless you think they’ll be interesting for your followers.

For example, many people tweet automatically every time they check in on Foursquare. Tweets like that get boring or annoying really fast, and some people (like me) are bound to unfollow you. Unless you’re a close friend who’s in the same city, I don’t really need to know what restaurant you’re at.

 
#4 – Have some variety and good stuff in your last three tweets.