Following 541 People to Following 24: Twitter

The other day I finally got fed up of Twitter. Not fed up of how useful it is in finding articles, finding useful ideas and learning a bit more, but fed up seeing constant updates from people I didn’t have any interest in, people who I only followed for the sake of it.

As I use TweetDeck, I was watching pop-ups come onto my screen all day, most of them irrelevant and not important to me.

Why? Because I was following 541 people.

Why? Because I was following back everyone who followed me and hoping people would do the same if I followed them first.

It seems like a good idea at the time; add people and then they notice your name. It’s like advertising, the more you see the name Coca Cola around, the more you recognise it when you are about to buy a drink at the local shop. But is the internet really like that? To buy a product, in my case visit my website so I get ad revenue, you have to physically type the website name in a spend time trying to find it. It isn’t given to you on a plate like a drink in a shop. Therefore even if a person recognises your Twitter name, it doesn’t mean they can do anything about it.

Walking Down the Path

This led me to going through who I was following on twitter and getting rid of more than half of them, a lot more than half. I’m down to 24 people as we speak, and these are all people who I actually have an interest in and want to carry on learning about the ideas they have and what articles they post online, a couple are also services I use, so getting updates about them is a must.

I have also decided not to just follow people back all the time. I am going to stick to adding people I find useful and want to make a connection with, yes I could have made a connection with all the 541 people I was previously following, but it wouldn’t have worked a s well, because I had no idea who most were and this would have meant I was just sucking up, not knowing what to discuss with them. By starting at this small number of people I am following again, I can build up slowly and get to know each person I follow and make more of an impact.

Have You Been Removed?

If I have stopped following you, I am very sorry, I have accidentally removed some people and I am going to follow those people later on today, when I find who they are! I was also not following many of the websites I visit, which I am also going to start doing so I actually see when they post etc. Be patient, I probably will be following you soon.

Regards,

Simon Duck