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I Won’t Follow You on Twitter If…

July 28th, 2009 · by David Bradley >> 13 Comments

twitter-buttonSwitching to superioso mode, stepping up on to my soapbox and generally adopting an entirely faux intolerant stance, here’s some guidance for those unsure who to follow on Twitter.

Unless I know you from somewhere else, I won’t follow you on Twitter if:

You use an expletive in your bio

You have zero followers but are following several hundred others

You call yourself a maverick, a maven, a guru, a raconteur, or some other silly word

Your bio link leads to a spammy site

You have a lewd avatar

You claim to be a marketing, SEO, SEM expert

You tweet nothing but ads

You use the word leverage non-ironically

You only retweet and have no original tweets

You have protected your twitter updates

You tweet only in a language I don’t speak (sorry)

You are a boring bot

You are an advertiser for a dumb twitter tool

You are promoting a “get more followers on Twitter” scheme

You promote selling paid tweets

You produce a negative result at any point in my twitter algorithm

Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. In fact, I will not only not follow, I will actively block. Other users hoping to cut out the nonsense could do worse than following a similar approach. Any thoughts? Leave a comment, tweet me, or retweet with commentary.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=follow+Twitter+sciencebase

13 responses so far ↓

  • David Bradley // Jul 28, 2009 at 8:02 am

    I won’t follow you on Twitter if… http://sciencetext.com/64 Advice for control twitter freaks

  • Ari Herzog // Jul 28, 2009 at 8:06 am

    Useful advice: I won’t follow you on Twitter if… http://sciencetext.com/64 Advice for control twitter freaks (via @sciencebase)

  • Joe Bonner // Jul 28, 2009 at 8:11 am

    Good advice from @sciencebase I won’t follow you on Twitter if… http://sciencetext.com/64 Advice for control twitter freaks

  • KnightMare // Jul 28, 2009 at 9:06 am

    Reading @sciencebase I Won’t Follow You on Twitter If… http://www.sciencetext.com/?p=2530

  • Ari Herzog // Jul 28, 2009 at 3:06 pm

    I’m looking for a bullet that news sites like @CNN would apply, but I don’t see one.

  • David Bradley // Jul 28, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    Not sure what you mean. I guess they’d fall into the category of generic corporate pseudobots…

  • David Bradley // Jul 28, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Of course, many of those “ifs” are very subjective one tweep’s lewd and crude is another’s fascination…

  • Kenna // Jul 28, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    I think you have to include something like:

    You don’t say anything interesting, important, novel, pithy etc. that I’d care to read. I.e. if you tweet about your selection at “Wendy’s” for lunch, I won’t bother with you.

    Right now, at least, I think that’s part of the reason why I haven’t found my niche yet- still tweeting a mismash of stuff and only have something interesting for my “audience” about half the time. Until I find a “voice” and a message, I think that folks won’t follow me for awhile. :) And they probably shouldn’t. I.e.- if you wouldn’t follow yourself, why would you expect someone else to. :)

  • David Bradley // Jul 28, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    Interesting point Kenna. I think I somehow ended up falling into several niches, whether that was a good thing or not I don’t know. My follower to followee ratio isn’t too high, I don’t think. Maybe it’s time to purge and block as another tweeter alluded to.

  • Longest Drive // Jul 31, 2009 at 10:51 am

    That’s a huge list you got there. :)

  • David Bradley // Jul 31, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    Thanks!

  • JGold // Aug 1, 2009 at 8:00 am

    David.. I think you would take back a few rules if you saw my uber Twitter money making machine . It is the best paid for tweet, work from home for 2 minutes a month way to get a million followers out!

    But no really, great rules to tweet by..

    Thanks

  • Mary Cottingham // Dec 25, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    How about if I explicitly tell you not to bother, such as ” Sweepers only need apply as followers… everyone else will be BORED.”

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