Comments on: Do You Follow More People than You Have Followers? [POLL]

By: Lisa Oden

Lisa Oden — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:13:09 +0000

I follow fewer than follow me. following 122 / followers 226. I basically use much of the same manual protocol which other have described. If you’re profile starts with “I can get you massive followers…” or “I can help you BUY followers…” not only will I not follow you. You’ll get the big BLOCK. I very much enjoy the tweets of most of those I follow, as we have great interaction. Leave the hardsell for the infomercials!

Here is my recommendation for the next poll – To block, or not to block. Would love to see the comments on that topic.

By: Brandon Tran

Brandon Tran — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:02:13 +0000

This is a great question. I have been asking this myself. I see these twitter profiles where they are following 20000 people and they have 20000 followers. Does that put them into the category of people who just follow people to gain followers in hopes that someone will read their tweets? Can you really actually follow 20,000 people’s comments? I personally don’t understand how that could be. I only follow people that I am influenced by. People that I admire and want to hear what they are tweeting about.

By: Kurt Avish

Kurt Avish — Sat, 09 May 2009 08:50:07 +0000

I follow less than the followers I have.

By: Kirsten

Kirsten — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:50:26 +0000

I think I follow a few more people than the number of followers I have, but I’m striving to keep it about even.

By: Mary

Mary — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:47:43 +0000

What I want from Twitter has evolved to this: I mostly want to follow a set of “high value” contacts and information sources. And I’ve found that a number of people follow me just to hawk their products and services, sometimes dozens of times a day. When I interpret that to be the case (review bios and notice if their tweets involve mostly their offerings and websites), I tend not to follow or quickly unfollow. As a result, I’m also trying to use a third-party program more and more, in order to filter and segment. For about two weeks now, I’ve been wondering if there will come a time when Twitter becomes information overload, in spite of the high value contacts and information I’m receiving from it. I’ve given up on the reciprocity idea; it hasn’t worked for me, due to repeated “Twimercials”.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:40:42 +0000

Like @rickybuchanan, I had to look up my numbers to respond to the poll. I follow less and fewer people than I have followers.

And like @notbovvered, I read bios, updates, and sometimes favorites to decide whether to follow someone, whether they followed me first or I learned of them from #followfriday. But I look at every new follower’s profile, even if they have a suspicious-looking username.

By: George Hodgkins

George Hodgkins — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:30:42 +0000

I voted “even” though my ratio always slightly favors “following” – currently 358 to 299. I’m only a month into the “Twitter experience” and am building a following. If you build organically, I think the balance will always favor “following.”

My strategy is simple. I search topics that interest me & follow people who have something interesting to say about those topics. If they follow me back, I send a thank you.

The only time I delete someone I’m following is if their posts are annoying or completely irrelevant to me — in other words, if I made a mistake following them in the first place.

One number I always look at when deciding whether to follow back someone who’s followed me is the number of “updates” — does the number make sense compared to the number of followers and following. Good writers can craft posts that look “real” but the statistics can often flush our spammers (e.g., 7000 followers, 4000 following, 15 updates).

I don’t obsess about these numbers, but I do like to see a balance. When the balance is off, there’s a problem.

By: pcNielsen

pcNielsen — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:20:59 +0000

I actually don’t pay attention to those numbers; just glad to find new people to follow and be followed by new people — *assuming* they are relevant follows.

By: Hector A. Henry S.

Hector A. Henry S. — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:19:55 +0000

Well in my case its happend that i use to have a lot of fallowing more that doze than doze that fallowme, but i maek a clean up becuase i wasen able to keep up whit all doze tweet and in fact all doze tweet wasen that good for me.

By: Phil Groom

Phil Groom — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:30:42 +0000

I have more followers than people I’m following. My ’strategy’ is simple:
1. When someone follows me, I look at their twitter name/id;
2. If it looks genuine, I check out their profile and updates;
3. If we seem to have a common interest, I follow back.

In general I’m more likely to follow back if the follower has completed their profile and given a website where I can find out more about them.