Unfollow Friday: I choose me.

We know how Follow Friday is supposed to work. I’m doing something a little different. I’ve hit that 2,000 following wall so I’ve had some Sophie’s Choices to make: Whom do I UNfollow? (Hat tip to Scott Stratten.)

How do I make room for new folks like Shakirah Dawud with whom I am already engaging? Just “met” her but we’ve had some nice conversations via our blogs and Twitter. I want to be open to meeting people, having the chance to follow them.

someecards.com - I'm thinking about unfollowing you.Making Room

  • Untweeps cleared out some dead weight, long lost tweeters and the like.
  • Friend or Follow surprised me a little. Find it interesting that my follower/following is not all the same people. Nice to mix it up, see different things and share that with different people.
  • TwitBlock with its cute ghostbusting logo is a good spam be gone tool (mostly clearing out spammers following me).

BTW Thanks to Neicole, Jenn for sharing some of the Twitter cleaning tools.

Bye Bye This is Seth’s Blog. Nothing personal.

Flushing spammers is one thing, but now it gets tricky. So this is what I’m doing:

  1. Gone are some of the automated feeds for news and blogs. Easier to ignore those via my always sent on “mark all as read” Google reader.
  2. If you have 5-20K followers, Mr./Ms. Insert [social media network] Expert, your clever tweet will turn up in my stream anyway. Unless it sucks.
  3. Zapped are a few duplicates. Multiple Twitter accounts, deal.
  4. On the bubble are a lot of media accounts, just feeds or inactive reporters and editors.

I still sit somewhere between Mark and Mitch on an open Twitter policy vs. a more strategically selective following, but my selectivity is shifting.

Kelly Taylor moment

I choose Me. It’s my Twitter. What benefit do I get out of it? How will that help me help others?

I want to keep my Twitter stream interesting, not boring. I don’t want to isolate myself and listen to the same old; I’ve kept around those with differing opinions, to keep me honest. I don’t want to get stuck in the talking about just PR and marketing and social media ruts. So I follow feeds about TV, sports, wise-cracking farm animals and am so glad Danny shared some non-business blogs to read.

I want to get the most out of my Twitter stream, which means following those who speak to me, engage me, motivate me, make me think however annoying or painful it may be.

Maybe it’s time to look at the stream, clear some TweetDeck columns. Whataya think?

Photo credit: Been in a Someecards rut, but they’re just so perfect.

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12 thoughts on “Unfollow Friday: I choose me.

  1. Hi Davina,
    Came to your blog through Sales Lion (love that guy!). Thanks for the post – I enjoyed your humor as well as the tips!

  2. Heck, when you mentioned “Mitch”, I was thinking it was going to be me; oh well… lol

    I did a similar thing last week. Went through Friend or Follow and Twitcleaner to see who wasn’t doing what I wanted to see. I tend to expect at least some semblance of sociability, and of course people who aren’t irritating me by talking about stuff I absolutely hate, but in general I’m fairly liberal. But I have to keep it pared; must have standards after all.
    Mitch Mitchell recently posted..Social Media Isn’t For Everyone

    1. Mitch, Different Mitch.. and I’ll have to visit your blog soon. Agree with having standards and as it is MY Twitter, I’ll use my own. Going with the Jed Bartlet approach, I do keep around smart people who disagree with me, offer different opinions. But yes, I’ve started cutting was are basically RSS feeds, a lot of noise and clutter to make room for those who are social, who offer more to me and my follows. Thanks for stopping by.

  3. HI davina

    I do regular checks of followers to see if we are interacting or not. At the moment I have quite a few more followers than following. That was not how I wanted it to be. However, I do suspect some people just use automated apps and follow as many people as they can regardless. I don’t automatically follow back. Like to check the blog before I do follow.

    Sometimes find someone has followed me and somehow they have got me following them without my approval. Of course I unfollow them! I also don’t expect those whom I follow to follow me. Some are experienced marketers who I feel I can learn heaps from so up to them if they want to keep track of my progress.

    We all make these decisions based on preferences, type of blog we own and what we want to get out of Twitter. Interestinlgy some I followed when I started, now don’t have any interaction with these people so have unfollowed. My list is always evolving and I hate clutter 😉

    Patricia Perth Australia
    Patricia@lavender recently posted..A Gardener’s Guide to Growing a Business

    1. Patricia, You really do have to clean it up more often.. as I’ve started purging, surprised by those I don’t read, the feeds, etc. Because of the bots and spammers, I don’t follow back immediately; I check out someone’s stream first, see if there’s some interaction, content worth sharing. And yes, it is about our own preferrences.. glad you added your own thoughts.

  4. Thanks for mentioning me, Davina, I’m flattered! I’ve been unconsciously pruning every now and then this way, mostly when I get one annoyingly irrelevant tweet too many. It’s cathartic (which is enough in itself for me), and I feel like only the most deserving should be allowed to fill up my stream. Who those people are is decided by yours truly.

    I have to mention, too–there are some Twitter “moguls” I don’t follow or have un-followed shortly after following because it’s actually redundant to keep them. Their tweets tend to make their way into my stream by multiple venues, and I find their in-person conversations a little too exclusive, talking about stuff that’s way over my head, or people I don’t know anything about (mostly the latter). What’s the point? I ask myself. And what’s the chance of my being able to make any meaningful contact with them? Almost zero, so I have to let them go. No hard feelings, and all their informative, useful, or motivating content’s still appreciated! Just not directly.
    Taqiyyah Shakirah Dawud recently posted..The Career Leap from Proofreader to Editor

    1. Much the same Shakirah, and you’re welcome. As I mentioned the 2,000 limit wall, that ratio Twitter has. But it’s also about being more time efficient. Even with my columns and lists, too much clutter and repetitive noise gets through. So I’ll let those I trust curate and filter some things for me, cut some out some of the rest. Bonus: I make room for those with whom I can engage, as I’m finding myself more interested in following people than news or brands.

  5. My friends at Elements Design called this “getting out the Twitter broom.” Every now and then, it just makes sense to clear out the detritus, whether it’s spammers or Paleo diet enthusiasts. Whenever I get out the broom, I think of how different my “starting” community was from the one I have now. I followed “big names” back then and didn’t always get a lot out of it. My community is much more rewarding since!
    Jenn Whinnem recently posted..jennwhinnem- OMG!!! RT @3hatscomm- Awesomesauce Just made of win RT @boalt- Old Spice Voicemail Message Generator http-owly-3KF2s

    1. Exactly Jenn. It IS about us, this is one of those times I think it’s ok to be selfish. Every time I run into what I consider a marketing hack, selling automated Twitter posts and FB updates, I think “yuck, I don’t want that crap in my stream.” I’ve started looking at not isolating myself, just getting the most ROI from my time on Twitter. So the UNFOLLOW button will be getting a regular workout.

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