I would agree. I find that often I am followed by those without many followers/followees and that I maintain more consistent (and interesting!) communication with these people.

I’d also add that if I tweet you several times to add to your conversation and you do not respond I may unfollow. If I cant engage there’s only so much I learn from someone and vice versa.

@jesskry

Hi Great comment, i agree with you about those who you tweet and not respond, why be on twitter

I also don’t follow people who are not in the demographics I am interested in. For me, that means friends, journalists, PR peeps, and techies. I also block anyone who follows me who is not in one of those categories. Draconian, perhaps, but why do I want Mr. Get Rich Quick in Real Estate following me?

RBL

I am not a techie, in PR a journalist etc….

Yes, i agree with the dont follow Fm Get Rich Quick in real estate, but why limit following to only those in that defined circuit.

I agree with your thought about tweeting someone several times and not getting a response. Especially when I see they are in the stream at the time I tweet — seems like there are specific type of connections people are looking for. Most of the time I’m seeing a lot of shallow ‘looking good’ kind of tweets or attention grabbers and not much insight or reality.

I’m still learning and having a great time doing it! And I only follow when I think there is a real possibility of common ground and/or someone really has something to say…

I’m fairly new to Twitter, but it seems to me that a lot of folks are treating the following thing like friending on Facebook — that is, when someone follows me there’s an expectation that I’ll automatically follow them back.

When I get a notification that I’ve a new follower I’ll certainly check out their profile, but if I don’t see something relevant or interesting on their current page of Tweets I usually won’t follow back — until they actually engage me in a conversation, at least…

[...] Twitter Follow Back Basics – Samer Forzley writing on SamerForzley.com reveals his method to avoid spammers on [...]

Wow. This was the general thinking last February. Things have changed in the general understanding of Twitter since then, especially in terms of the fact that the 2000 follow limit makes it so people must unfollow you if you don’t follow back *if* they are tweeting successfully and trying to grow.

I have to unfollow anyone who doesn’t follow back within 6 weeks.

I see the author has not yet followed more than 700, which means he wasn’t interested to sell his firm’s message to a group that he targeted so much as he has wanted people to find him on their own. It looks “good” that he has 1000 more followers than follows, but they are people who, like him, aren’t even approaching the 2000 follow limit so they can afford it that he doesn’t follow them back. They can find him interesting and that is that.

The whole dynamic changes as you follow (target for interaction) 2000 and beyond.

***1) If you add me, and have 2000 followers and < 500 following you, I will not follow you back.

Agreed – But anyone with 1000 followers would be smart to follow an extra targeted 1000, because they woud then quickly get an extra targeted 500 followers. A lot of smart Twitters are close to the 2000 follow limit.

It is not as if anyone's general stream is supposed to be read. After a stream is bigger than 300 people, it becomes a fast running brook. The human eye can't tell a speed difference and a varied fast stream may be more interesting and you will see less spam (because you picked the extra 1000 people for being interesting rather than auto-followed spam followers).

**4) If you add me and tweet once or twice a day, I will not add you back (what is the point, i am going to miss 99% of your tweets)

Interesting point, but many of the most important people don't have time to tweet their lives away. Many also now think of their Twitter page as the front page of their "Newspaper". They might want to leave a "masterpiece" set of tweets up for a few days without burying the good stuff under new tweets…so the hundreds of new people they just followed will read the newspaper edition as the editor wanted it to be.

This applies to anyone who tweets, not just the marketers of a product or service. A Twitter page markets your general "message". Sometimes a set of tweets is too good to bury for a few days (or forever in some cases).

***6) if you add me, and I add you and after 4 week, i see that I have no clue who you are, I will unfollow you

I would assume you'd look at what they've said and who they are before taking that action. It could be that you just weren't lucky enough to see their tweets in real time because of a geographical time difference or luck.

**7) if I add you, and you DM instantly with a blog post to check you out, I will unfollow you

I agree but I don't do this because many of these people will RT what I have to say which adds value. They usually don't repeat those DMs.

**8) If you follow me, and I dont follow you back, you remove me, and then follow me again so that i follow you, I will NEVER follow you back

There is nothing wrong with this if your initial non-follow had not been on purpose. If it was, you were already *never* going to follow back. If it was not, you would probably not notice and often a follow occurs when this is done. I consider it a smart move to unfollow/refollow if the person is someone I want to interchange with once or twice over 6 months. If they have a cantankerous personality, this is information in itself – business with them would probably not happen anyway.

I would know that this is being done because I get instant unfollow reports. If the person is not someone I had deliberately not followed back, I am quite often motivated to follow and I respect the person for "reminding me". In fact, an unfollow report will often move me to notice that I should have followed someone and I end up following them because they just unfollowed me…of course they have to then refollow.

If someone I had not wanted to follow before does this, I immediately block them, but not because they did something wrong so much as I am being moved to finally show my hand and admit I am not interested.

But I would only do that to low IQ spammers and bots, not to anyone who seems to post interesting tweets and seems to really want me to read them.

Note to that last sentence…it is not as if I or anyone else actually *will* read that person’s tweets. We miss the majority of the tweets of even the people we are most interested in. We only see 4% of the tweets of the average person we follow and that is a liberal estimate.

Here is whom I unfollow quickly. Note that I am assuming that the stream is not meant to be read (cannot be read logically unless I only follow 10 people) and anyone I find interesting I am going to visit on my own regardless of whether I am following them – whether I follow someone is irrelevant to whether I read their Twitter page regularly or not:

1) If someone tweets a lot and follows a lot fewer than follow them…I give them only a week or less to have noticed me as a new follower, possibly read my tweets and made the decision not to follow. That tells me that the person is probably not a potential partner. If they are really potentially important, I will unfollow and then, months later, try a new follow.

Note that my follow behavior bears no relation to whether I regularly read their page or not. I regularly read @TheMediaIsDying and major media accounts for instance, but I would never follow them because they don’t follow back and I’d never see their tweets when I want to see them anyway.

2) If someone is really important, I will RT what they say that is interesting. I often do this at the moment I unfollow them so they are given one last chance to follow back. If nothing I do to help them spread their message causes them to follow back, I conclude they don’t know how to use Twitter and think they don’t need help spreading their company’s message. I may consider not to approach them in real life in favor of the many, many potential partners who had followed back and interacted.

Note again that I may still regularly read the account of someone I don’t follow because of a non-follow attitude of the other account like @themediaisdying or @deliverability. Following and reading bear almost no relation to each other. The stream runs too fast for this not to be so.

I forgot to add that, yes, real estate tweeters, anyone whose last tweet was about teeth whitening or getting more followers or anyone who constantly tweets about their business that I am not interested in (such as a dog kennel) or has nothing but recycled quotes gets no follow back.

Senderok

I will only make one comment on your replies and that comment relates to

“I see the author has not yet followed more than 700, which means he wasn’t interested to sell his firm’s message to a group that he targeted so much as he has wanted people to find him on their own. It looks “good” that he has 1000 more followers than follows, but they are people who, like him, aren’t even approaching the 2000 follow limit so they can afford it that he doesn’t follow them back. They can find him interesting and that is that.”

any one who follows me on twitter can judge my tweets. Nothing to hide on twitter. I rarely push my company on my account, its a personal account and that is that.

I dont follow everyone because most accounts are bots or fake. if twitter deleted all the junk accounts, i am sure my follow to follower ration would be close.

I agree. I have blocked 1000s of followers on various accounts. I don’t let someone follow who is obviously a spammer because I know they’re likely to try to unfollow/refollow, which really wastes time.

Pro spammers will either do that or block you for not following them, which can hurt your reputation, so I just block as soon as I see someone who obviously isn’t going to really read anything I write. This keeps the follower count down below the count of those I follow.

I follow back and like to talk about everything from motivational, funny, my personal life, global news, politics, and I love talking about how to build a business.

follow me and I will follow you:
http://www.twitter.com/JML4LTD