Who And Why I Follow Back on Twitter

Catching up on some work this morning and going through new people that started following me over the past two weeks.  I've got my account setup so I get email notification when someone follows me and I look at each one, determining whether I want to follow back. Out of the 302 new followers I picked up in the past couple of weeks, I followed back only 27 this morning. That's only 8.95% and it is pretty typical.

Here's how I personally sort this stuff out:

When someone follows my feed I've got Twitter setup to send me an email notification.
I've got my email client (Thunderbird) setup to automatically move those Twitter email notifications to a separate Twitter folder. When I have some time (like this morning) I go through the notifications, determining whether I want to follow back. Here's my follow-back determination procedure:

1. I've got Thunderbird setup to preview email. The first thing I look for is a name (a person) attached to the account. If I don't know your organization and there is no name listed, I'm probably not going to follow back. Some details:

• I try and only follow back those with similar interests, these interests can be both work and hobby related. If you are a business, organization, academic institution or individual involved in Science, Technology Engineering or Math (STEM) I'm definitely following you back. I'll also follow you back if you are focused on one of my hobbies - for example - saltwater flyfishing. 
• Sorry but religion and politics are always a do not follow back red flag for me. I know many use Twitter and other social media for this kind of stuff and I don't have a problem with that. It's just not what I personally use it for.

2. If I like what I see in the email preview I'll click the link to your feed and take a look at the last 5 or so posts. If it is junk - spam, any hint of profanity, etc. Done - I'm not following you. The best chance for a follow back is if you have something posted I'm interested in. Maybe it is a short description with a link to an interesting post on the web. If it is something I really like and retweet it, you are definitely getting a follow back.

3. There are some exceptions and I typically follow back the following:

• Local businesses (not based on religion or politics). This includes my favorite Pizza shop in Western Massachusetts. 
• Known organizations, like the National Science Foundation (of course!)
• Some celebrities - how could you not follow back someone like Weird Al Yankovic? 
• Old friends and sometimes friends of friends if I can sort the connections out. 

4. Once I start following you - if I do see any spam, profanity, religion, politics I'm un-following you. I also occasionally go in and cull the list of people I follow and this is the kind of stuff I'm looking for.

 So..... back to my experience today - only 27 follow backs out of 302 new followers..... 8.95%. Yes - there is a lot of junk out there but..... mixed in with the junk there is a lot of good stuff.

You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/gsnyder

Shoulder Injury = Slow Blog Output

I've had a nasty shoulder injury and it is keeping me from blogging at my usual pace. Most of my writing is done after I get home from work in the evenings. With this injury I'm still working during the day but usually get home, eat dinner and end up crashing. It has really slowed my writing.

I'm working on a piece about President Elect Obama's pick for Kevin Martin's successor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - Julius Genachowski. Give me a day or two to finish it up. Hopefully by then I'll be back closer to my normal output.

Thanks.

Microblogging Study Released

You're reading this so you may have noticed my Twitter feed over in the left column. Wikipedia defines Twitter as a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

One of my favorite "tweeters" is Laura Filton, Principal and Founder of Pistachio Consulting. According to her website, Laura Fitton is one of the first prominent “microbloggers,” with roughly 8,400 readers on Twitter. She specializes in connecting people to new ideas and innovations using all the tools of (what Laura calls) microsharing. Here's more from her site:

Brands and businesses are flocking to Twitter. Internal “enterprise 2.0″ microsharing can make your company run better. But most companies have little or no clear idea of how these tools really work, what they could accomplish or how to do so. At best, many efforts are shots in the dark. At worst, they’re squandering time, resources, opportunity and brand equity.

Laura recently released a report titled Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison - Nineteen Applications to Revolutionize Employee Effectiveness. In the report, she takes a look at 19 different microblogging applications and how they are being used for things like HR, Marketing and Sales, R&D, Innovation, Customer relations, etc. You can get online and PDF versions and more information on the report here: http://pistachioconsulting.com/services/research/.

You can find and follow Laura (@pistachio) on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/pistachio.

I don't tweet anywhere near as much as Laura but you can also find and follow me (@gsnyder) on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/gsnyder