To Follow Or Not Follow: Twitter Following “Strategies”

Note that I put “Strategies” in quotations up in the title, because Twitter was created to let people who are interested know what you are doing. In that case, a word like “style” or “method” would be more appropriate. I recently unfollowed almost everyone I was previously following on Twitter, because I had reevaluated my priorities and accepted Twitter’s true purpose as I described in the first sentence of this post. As I describe this decision, I will also point out a few “strategies” I have seen people use on Twitter.

1. The You-Scratch-My-Back-And-I’ll-Scratch-Yours Strategy – This seems to be the most common follow strategy I have seen on Twitter, and it’s the one I used pretty much since I joined Twitter. It is a reasonable method: if someone follows you, return the favor and follow them back. The good part of this strategy is that it is a win-win outcome for both users, as both get a new follower. The downside really will not become apparent until you have amassed a long list of people who you follow and who follow you back. This leads to saturation of your Twitter stream, which is means you will have a hard time finding the tweets important to you.
2. The Follow-Loads-Of-People-And-Then-Unfollow-Them-All Strategy – This is used by many people who take advantage of the people using the strategy above to get a large follower base, then use their new follower count to make it look as if they are marketing geniuses in order to sell a product or just to brag about their large follower base. My advice, don’t try this strategy, it just doesn’t make you look good.
3. The Follow-Who-You-Want-To-Follow Strategy A.K.A. Twitter’s Purpose – This is the strategy I recently switched to because as I said before, I previously used the first strategy but became annoyed by the difficulty of finding quality tweets in my Twitter stream. Of course, some people may be disappointed when they follow you but do not get followed back, but you will stay happy knowing that you followed the people you have because you are genuinely interested in the information they provide.

So maybe this is more of a protest to get people to rediscover the reason why Twitter was created. If that is what you want to think, fine with me. All I am doing is explaining why I unfollowed tons of people while providing my Twitter follow observations as well. By the way, if you are interested in what I have to say, follow me on Twitter.