Ahhh, Twitter. Another place to worry about if people like you or not. And not since high school have you been so well able to quantify how popular you are (or aren’t). Because, let’s face it, having less Facebook friends might actually make you cooler.
Just like adolescence, it hurts a bunch when you put yourself out there and your social life suffers because of it. In this case, a drop in your number of followers. It’s something that affects people of any level of Twitter influence. I see people with exponentially more followers than me tweet questions about why they just lost a bunch of people.
Here are some reasons that I can think of:
- Sometimes, you’ve offended people.
I know that there are certain tweets that I’ve written involving sensitive subjects that have then resulted in unfollows. It seems like a fair correlation to draw. By now, I’m aware of the risk.
This is a question of who you want to be seen as online. Do you want your tweets to be vanilla? Or are you willing to risk offending people to potentially be interesting enough to gain better connections and other potential followers? It’s extremely subjective, but I would rather have a unique voice than worry that I might lose a couple of followers.
- There’s a lot of spam.
I imagine some percentage of your unfollows have to deal with inactive accounts following you to begin with, which get deleted after people report them.
- Maybe you’re tweeting too much.
As I mentioned in my Tips post, there’s really no reason to be on Twitter if you’re not active. But if you’re tweeting every couple minutes, you might have people feel like you’re unnecessarily dominating their feed. Make sure that you’re not just pimping your stuff out. I find myself a lot more forgiving on continuing to follow people who are engaged in long conversations on Twitter, even if I’m not interested.
And instead of doing the lame “Sorry for my following excessive tweeting” tweet that others do before Twitter events, I’m considering putting up a link on how to block hashtags before #TTOT.
(Spoiler alert: Proxlet is great for Google Chrome users and TweetDeck and HootSuite have their own hashtag blocking functions.)
- You over-hashtag.
Don’t be the guy who has 10 hashtags after his tweet to try to generate as much notice as possible. I rarely find myself getting new followers (or even mentions) because of a hashtag. If anything, it highlights your tweet to the people that are already following you, so don’t alienate them. #Pick #and #choose #your #hashtags. #yourewastingcharactersanyway
- Are you following them?
If you’re not following people, it makes it a lot easy for them to unfollow you. The more interactive you are, the more of a chance someone’s heartstrings will tug, stopping them from unfollowing you and leaving you just under that wonderful round number you’ve been chasing.
Conclusion:
I’m almost to the point of being happy when I see that I’ve lost followers. Why would I want someone to follow me if they aren’t interested in what I have to say?
Early on in your Twitter life, you need to find your voice and learn your audience. Once you’ve hit a stride, it doesn’t behoove you to pay too much attention to the people you might lose. Pay more attention to the people that follow you. Develop the connections with people who care.
Don’t forget: there’s always a chance to win these people back. It’s not high school. You have more than 4 years to get it right.
What do you think? Why do you unfollow people? What reasons did I forget?
For research, I stumbled upon a couple of posts:
6 Reasons Why I Unfollowed You on Twitter
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