Hey,
So this one's a bit of a quickie.
Came across this article from 8/10/12 shared at the National Arts Marketing Project FB page, 5 reasons people unfollow you on Twitter. It begins with:
1. Every tweet is about your product or service.
"Exciting news! Version 5.3 just released!" "Check out our brand-new feature!" If every single tweet is about something your company is doing, I'm not going to follow you. I get flooded with enough marketing in the rest of my life.I definitely recommend checking out the article for the other four.
I had to add the following:
Thank you for sharing this!! I would add (as it relates to #1) that not following back is another reason. Maybe not as common, but personally, when I reached my follower limit, the orgs I didn't unfollow were the ones who had reciprocated this simple SM gesture, as it showed that they were interested in engaging with me and not just broadcasting to me.
I wonder how much of that comes from Twitter being treated like Facebook, and a new follower is thought of simply as a new like, when there's a different method of engagement and orgs have the ability to follow back on Twitter, where they don't have the opportunity to like back on Facebook.So that's my take on things. I understand that people want to curate their Twitter stream, but that's what lists are for. The pros of following others back, providing they're non Real Estate agents, porn bots, or belong to Team #FollowBack (amongst other savory characters on twitter), seem to outweigh the cons.
Something to consider when doing a social media audit. But this coupled with #1 from the link at the top would probably be my biggest quibble with many arts organizations on Twitter.
What do you think? Are you with an arts org that doesn't follow back most of its followers? Why not? If you do, why do you? How much of what you tweet is about the org? If you do tweet about other things, what do you tweet about?
And all these ultimately beg the question, what are you and your arts organization's goals on Twitter?
Because if engagement is one of them, then reciprocating follows and diversifying your content are things you should strongly consider doing, if you're not already,
- JR
4 comments:
I am one to not necessarily follow back. Whether it be with my personal account or with the organization that I am working for. My justification behind this:
Personal account: I already follow several hundred people which means that there is not earthly way for me to see everyone's tweets. I want to make sure that I am able to interact with those that I follow. If someone follows me but never interacts than I wonder what their motivations were in the first place. I want to make sure that the folks I follow are relevant to my purpose.
Professional account: this get trickier but actually allows you to feel less guilty about not following. Personally I never expect a large organization to follow me back because I assume they are averaging multiple new follows a day. As the administrator on the account I do tend to be more liberal in my follow backs, but generally when an individual follows a company they first engage, then follow.
The key is engagement on all levels from your followers. "Dead" followers as I call them, add little value to your efforts. So often I don't worry to much about them
Hey, definitely agree with where you're coming from. However, in terms of being able to comprehensively go through tweets, that's what I utilize my lists for.
I prefer to follow back every substantive account, and curate with lists and their streams, rather than curate my main one by not reciprocating when someone else follows me.
However with dead followers, or those that add little to no value (like real estate agents, porn bots, #TeamFollowBack members, etc.) I have actually been blocking (and reporting spam when appropriate) anyone I don't follow back. And with new followers, there've been days when I've blocked almost as many people as I've followed back.
I know, it probably seems a bit extreme, but it's based on the same point you made about engagement. If someone's just following me to boost their numbers and aren't relevant to or engaging with my content (among other factors, like still having an egg for a profile pic, or not having a bio), than I will not hesitate to block them.
Ultimately it's because not only don't I care about the quantity of my followers, but I also want to be just as intentional about who follows me as I am about who I follow.
A good deal of this is influenced by having read Ted Coine's Follow Back Policy (which I recommend checking out http://switchandshift.com/teds-twitter-follow-back-policy), particularly this sentiment which I immediately subscribed to:
"Much more importantly (to me), here’s why I follow everyone back: I’m not more important than my followers."
All good points.
I still stick to my personal code:
"If you don't have anything real to say I won't follow you back.'
I too "unfollow [/block report a span] spammers with impunity. Glee, even."
If you are a real person chances are I will follow you back at some point. But you do have to prove yourself to me, just a little bit :-)
Absolutely, to each their own.
But your code's also probably a bit more forgiving than mine. At least noobs can still follow you and (hopefully) eventually figure this social media thing out, interact with you, and warrant a follow back.
Who knows, I might change my own personal code once I've reached Following/Follower equilibrium.
Post a Comment