How To NOT Get Followed On Twitter

Companies are taking notice of Twitter follower quality more than ever, and managing their lists with more of an eye to the people they really want to talk to. The exact criteria vary from business to business, so instead of looking at good follower characteristics let’s look at bad ones – they’re universal. As a social media developer at GILL Media (follow us at twitter(dot)com/GILL_Media) I look at certain characteristics as “yellow cards.” Get too many and I either won’t follow you, or may unfollow you after taking the time to investigate your account more deeply. If you want quality followers, avoid these yellow cards:

Lots of Inspirational Quotes: These are often auto-generated, so they make me suspect spam. If you genuinely want to share inspirational quotes you need to do something extra to attract me. Choose a monthly theme and write down quotes related to it. Also, attribute your quotes – spammers usually don’t bother.

Numbers in Username: These make me think you’re part of a series of auto-generated accounts. The only exception is when I can tell that the numbers themselves have a meaning. Otherwise you’re probably out of luck.

Default Icon: Come on, folks: It takes next to no effort to put your own picture up. This tells me you’re either fake or lazy. I make exceptions for brand new accounts and situations where your content is really interesting, however, so this is just a minor infraction.

No Wallpaper: This is another minor “yellow card.” Wallpaper makes me think you take Twitter seriously enough to participate with quality content. If I’m sitting on the fence about you and don’t see wallpaper, this might send me away in the end, but if everything else is good this is no big deal.

Sexy Icon: I’m not just talking about porn (though we block that wherever we find it). Lots of spam accounts have icons of attractive young women in raunchy poses, ready to whisper to you about . . . diet pills and other online trash. No thanks. I really sympathize with actual attractive young women on Twitter who have to deal with being mistaken for fakes, so if the icon doesn’t have that raunchy pose I will take a look at the account to see if it’s a real person.

Strange URL Shorteners: If you’re not using bit(dot)ly or TinyURL you’ve given yourself an extra hurdle to jump when it comes to gaining my trust, since I don’t want to risk clicking on links I don’t know.  It’s extra suspicious when I see you’re using lots of different shorteners. Are they changing as they shut down after being caught for some scam? I don’t know and don’t have time to find out. Sorry.

Low/No Activity: I recently stopped following everyone who hadn’t posted for two or months and will probably check back every couple of months to prune my list again. Twitter relies on frequency. Unless I see a post telling me you’re going on holiday or something (there’s nothing wrong with the odd social media sabbatical!) I’m afraid we’re going to have to part ways.

Do you have any of these yellow cards? If so, give them a fix – after that, lots of people will be happy to add you!