In a sense, social media is like one big popularity contest. The in crowd has loads of Twitter followers, tons of Facebook friends. They get ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ and LinkedIn like they were born to do it.
Then you have the unlucky crew who finds themselves unfriended. Unfollowed! Even blocked.
Let’s seat you in at the right “lunch table” shall we? We’ll start with Twitter. Here are some surefire ways to keep you from being unfollowed.
- Don’t come off crazy! So that annoying guy at Starbucks budged in line. Unless you do it in a witty, lighthearted way – don’t tweet your ‘cafe rage’. It’s not interesting or valuable to anyone and it could paint you as a negative nutcase.
- Don’t offend. There’s nothing followable about racism, sexism or off-color tweets. Anything you wouldn’t say in front of a live customer should never be tweeted. Heck – you shouldn’t be saying that stuff in the first place!
- Don’t be Casper. You have to keep up your end of the conversation. If you tweet once a month, don’t be surprised if no one cares about your opinions (or your coupon codes.) Keep it frequent.
- Don’t be “OverFrequent”, Either: Once a month is too little but once every 10 minutes for 6 hours straight is obnoxious. Don’t punish your followers by dominating up their screens with tons of tweets. Let someone else get a tweet in edgewise.
- Don’t Overshare: I don’t care who you are, I don’t want to know about your partying, your personal hygiene or your bathroom breaks. And you know what….your followers agree with me.
- Don’t Go Link Nuts: Posting links is encouraged. Just make sure you don’t dump a URL as a tweet with no explanation. It comes off spammy, even if the link is a nice photo of your nice doggie. Explain what your followers will see when they click that link!
- Don’t Get Too Controversial: Getting overzealous about a certain political party or sports team or celebrity will lose your followers who don’t care for them. Don’t be boring, certainly, but try not to taunt your followers.
- Don’t be a Robot: The point of Twitter is to let people get to know you, personally. Automating everything (in an obvious way) is a big fat turn-off to a lot of people. No one wants to follow software.
What makes you unfollow someone? Tell us your best unfollow story by posting a comment below!