Last week, I went through my Twitter list and weeded out about 250 accounts. This took FOREVER, and if anybody knows a way to do it without looking at each and every account, please clue me in!
I had already noticed an increasing number of people who follow me to get me to follow back, then promptly unfollow me. File that under skanky self-promotion! I also cleared out a lot of inactive accounts and people who only ever tweet their contest entries. (ie: I just entered to win …)
Almost immediately, I saw an improvement in my Twitter feed. Less BUY MY BOOK bleats and a lot more conversation. On Saturday night, a tweet about Anne of Cleves prompted me to reply to someone I didn’t really know. After a few tweets, I learned that she writes about Mayans for MG readers and is going to Mexico City next month and visiting Teotihuacan. I was just there in August! I sent her the list of recommended restaurants my brother had given me (He works for the FCC and spends a lot of time in Mexico City.), and then we found out she is using the same tour company I used! Awesome coincidence, huh?
Anyway, Twitter is a lot more fun with less advertisement. Yes, we all want to promote our books there sometimes, but I’m going to get more finicky about who I follow. I’m there for the twitversation – not the ads.
I’ve been thinking about doing this. The other day I unfollowed someone who was repeatedly asking for more followers, until finally I couldn’t take it anymore. But I know I’ve followed a few accounts just to be courteous, and then deeply regretted it as my feed filled with annoying, self-promotional tweets. One account I’ll never regret following, though, even though it hasn’t led to a single interaction: Self-Aware Roomba. It pleases me. Sometimes it’s less about conversation and more about small moments of levity.
Hey:)
Try: http://who.unfollowed.me/
OMGosh, I *LOVE* it and I only have the “lite” version.
It is sooooo easy and fun!!! to use, I swear 🙂
Thanks for sharing the tips. I’m not on Twitter yet but thinking about it.
It’s good to hear something positive about Twitter. Technically, I “have” an account, but I tweet less than a canary with no voice box. Keep saying I’m gonna do better, but then… well, then, I don’t. Maybe next year. Totally cool you hooked up with someone who’s planning a trip to Mexico in parallel to the one you took. That’s a tweet definitely worth crowing about.
Have you tried an application like TweetDeck? It allows you to organize the people you follow into columns, so you don’t have to read every single tweet in your timeline. For instance, you can have a column for your family, your writer buddies, your publishing peeps, etc.
That way, even if you hesitate to unfollow people, you can still see at a glance if the people you really want to keep up with have tweeted anything, and don’t have to wade through a bunch of commercials.
I’m totally going to do this. When I have the time. I’m getting tired with the amount of spam tweets, especially the spam RT to get people to follow such and such celebrity. I don’t need Justin Bieber to follow me. And I doubt it’s really him looking for more followers.
I have yet to do Twitter but keep hearing I should b/c of the amazing connection you just mentioned! I also love your previous post about your 5th grade class – SO rewarding. What an inspirational teacher 🙂
I do that on a regular basis, Dianne! So tired of opening up my newsfeed and seeing pleas to buy this book or buy that book! It’s about time for me to clean out my Twitter feed too, and also my blog roll. How fun that you made such an interesting new Twitter buddy – so cool how the stars align, huh?
I have a twitter account but no cell phone and certainly no time to play with it on my computer when I’m supposed to be writing, or blogging. I’m sure I’m missing a lot but there is only so much time in a day and my writing needs to come first.
As for those hideous people who follow to get you to do the same and then promptly unfollow, well, you can probably guess what I think of them 🙂
Hi Dianne .. great informative post – I’m pretty wary about blogger followers too … and next year will get into FB and Twitter properly – try and understand what’s going on – ever hopeful I’ll get educated! Hate spam or time wasters …
Cheers Hilary
I use friendorfollow and I have a major crush on twitter. It’s my favorite social media. Am I following you? No idea?? Which tells you how badly I need to clean up my feed. I usually only respond to @s and lately I’ve been trying to unfollow the promocrazies.
I have twitter -in fact, we’re following each other- but I really only use it to tweet about blog hop giveaways and stuff, so I’m likely one of those people who clog up your feed with it LOL
I’ve occasionally tried to keep up with the feeds, but it’s hard to follow a conversation or train of thought there.
I’ve often wondered how someone who follows 100’s (1000’s?) can keep up with anything at all. O_o
Congrats to you for tackling the chore of cleaning out your twitter feeders… and btw, thanks for keeping me 🙂 (tho I’d totally understand if you tossed me out as well since I probably don’t bring much to your twitter mix)
Have a great day!
I’ve been using FriendorFollow for years. I used to be all friendly with the art and craft world, but since focusing on writing, I’ve had a lot of unfollows – thanks to FriendorFollow, I can delete a ton of people in only a few minutes.
Good luck! Social networking upkeep is annoying.
Twitter is tough. I suggest creating lists to capture people you want to watch whenever you log into your account. Does that make sense?
That really is a coincidence. I’m sure she really appreciates your advice on traveling to Mexico, and you’re so nice to take the time to help her. 🙂
You had me at Anne of Cleves, although Jane Seymour is my girl. I played her in college and have been addicted to the Tudor period ever since.
I was on someone’s blog the other day (wish I could remember which blog!) and they were talking about doing this exact thing. This person used Twit Cleaner – so I tried it. It groups followers into categories like: only tweets links, spammy, hasn’t posted, … Very helpful. Here’s the link http://thetwitcleaner.com/
It’s sad. I have Tweetdeck but I don’t know how to add people in columns. LOL
But I recently weeded out some people–talk about time-consuming!
Oh, man. I need to do this myself. And I’ve been putting it off because I don’t think there is any way besides laboriously going through each follower and deciding yay or nay.
For a while I had “Sorry, I do NOT auto-follow” as part of my Twitter profile because I’d hoped that would discourage the self-promoters but alas, it did not. And you’re right, you can always tell those ones because if you don’t follow back within 24 hours, they unfollow you. Bleh.
I heard the government is saving tweets – all of them. National Archives maybe. Make every tweet count. 🙂
You’re so right. I have virtually stopped tweeting recently as I get so fed up reading down my lists and seeing only promo stuff. My time is precious and I don’t want o spend it reading endless ads that are mostly meaningless. Kudos to you for doing some weeding. I should do it myself but as you say, so time consuming….
I’m careful who I follow by looking at their tweets, but I still end up with endless ‘buy my book’ tweets clogging up. I also have a lot of people who tweet ‘RT for follow’, which is really annoying. I joined Twitter to find those interesting, random conversations, and they do happen, but not frequently.
Great idea. As I’ve been using twitter more and more I am feeling bombarded with “buy my book” tweets, but then I feel guilty unfollowing someone who is following me. Twitter is definitely still a mystery to me. Impressed you went through your acct. and weeded out that many people-AND then were able to connect with someone new.