Do You Follow Back When Businesses Follow You?
October 12th, 2009
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by Carlton Flowers · Filed Under: Uncategorized
Today’s question is on the topic of reciprocal following. When you get a new follower that is a business, do you follow back when it is obvious that they are rapidly following and building their Twitter list while having a relatively low number of posts? When I see a new business following me on Twitter, I will sometimes follow them back. But sometimes I won’t, and I can tell right away just by looking at their Twitter friend/follow statistics and the type of posts that they Tweet. Where do you draw the line? Let’s help those in the business community to understand what motivates us to follow them, or what tips us off to ignore them. Watch the video below, and then sound off! Be heard!
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I’m not a believer in reciprocal following for several reasons. One of the biggest reasons is noise. You only have to listen to some of those with thousands of followers complain about Dm spam to figure out one of the biggest issues with that concept.Here’s a pair of great posts that looks at this whole topic:
http://www.michelfortin.com/autofollow-fiasco/
http://www.twitip.com/why-following-too-many-people-will-cost-you/
Here’s how I decide who to follow:
If they are following more people than are following them, it tells me that numbers are more important than interaction, are bots, or spammers/broadcasters. And unless it’s someone or a company I really want to follow, it isn’t going to happen.
I’m fine with following businesses IF they interact and have something interesting to say, so their icon isn’t exactly an issue.
If they are following far less than are following them, it impresses me. It tells me that they are selective about the people who surround and influence them and that interaction is important to them.
I also look at a person’s tweet stream. If they constantly tweet, but never retweet or respond to anyone, I don’t follow them. If they only tweet links, I don’t follow. I look for a stream with a variety of tweets that match my interests or look fun.
So, in your example, I would not follow back. Period.
No, I rarely follow businesses back unless I’m interested in or using their product or service. I learned a long time ago that following all businesses back will lead to an abundance of spam tweets. Just too much noise in my timeline.
I don’t have a lot of following rules any more. I used to be pretty picky. I spend most of my time trying really hard to follow people back. I can say that I like to follow businesses that I am interested in already. I don’t want to follow people who have gimmicks or look like they are trying to sell “secrets” about something. I do like to see what people look like and I like it when people use their real names. Lately there are so many strange things on twitter that the rules don’t seem to apply like they used to. I want to see twitter implementing more rules and getting rid of the spam accounts. If you see an example of a business using twitter effectively – will you let me know. I like to use examples for my research on how to help companies use social media. Thank you, Carlton
I think businesses on Twitter is a good idea. For me, following businesses is only done if it is of interest me, it’s just noise otherwise. Thanks Carlton, for a chance to make my voice heard.
Yeah, I do the auto follow and then weed out the knuckleheads when I get time later.
john (ColderICE)
http://www.ColderICE.com
Great idea Carlton! I would follow them back if I’m interested in their business. But, having a 2000/200 ratio and no avatar, would indicate to me that they don’t really “get” twitter. So, I would be cautious in following back.
No can follow that person bro. That’s clearly a mass spam to get some business without any type of relationship with the customer. Sorry, I am not their Twitter-Trick!
I ignore all incoming follow emails via a filter. I never see them. I don’t care who follows me. If someone wants me to follow them, they should make themselves known some other way, maybe like…by interacting with me.
Basically like everyone said. I only follow if it’s something I’m interested in. If not I ignore the request.
When I first started building my Twitter network, I started autofollowing and that was the worst thing I could of did because it started following bots, spammers and people that are not even in the same niche as me. That only led to a clutter of non targeted tweets, spam, and clogged up my Twitter stream.
The method I use now is manual follow, from time to time I may autofollow and THEN I go and weed out the people I do not want to follow just because of limited time, but most of the time when businesses follow me, unless I am familiar with that business I don’t follow back or if their social media marketing strategy is borning I don’t follow back.
The only time I follow a business is when I am atleast somewhat familiar with it, I check out their twitter presence and see how much they interact with their customers and potential customers and how they relay their message to their followers, are they just blasting out advertisements or are they interacting and holding contest or free giveaways etc for their customers