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5-Real-Reasons-I'm-Not-Following-You-Back-On-Twitter

Twitter is fast becoming one of the most useful tools for interaction with people online – either for fun or business. To help make things easier for people, a lot of services have been created that lets people automatically follow people back on Twitter if they’ve been followed.

Sure, that’s a fine and dandy tool but I for one, am not going to be using any automatic tools to do my following back! I painstakingly manually follow people back – one click at a time.

If you followed me on Twitter and I don’t follow you back, here are my reasons why…

1. I Learnt It The Hard Way

I followed some people back in my beginnings on Twitter and I get an automated message telling me to visit a link. Which I did – I was directed to a web site that was trying to sell me on a money making opportunity.

When I tried to get out and close the window, I got another window telling me to visit another site. Innocently (or very stupidly), I clicked.

Porn.

Closed it as fast as I could – I was at home with family in the background.

Unfollowed immediately. The account has since been shot down – never to Tweet again.

Nothing wrong with using automated messages to send a link, in my opinion, it’s just a preference for many people. Some like links, others don’t. You’ll win some friends, you’ll lose some trust – either way, don’t ever aim to please everybody because you’ll please nobody in the end.

2. Are you human?

Twitter is a social networking site. It’s a place where people can come together and communicate with people from all walks of life. If the Twitter account is nothing but a promotion for a web site, I’m sorry – NO FOLLOW.

But they’ll never know because the account was never made to be controlled by a human in the first place, wasn’t it?

Some people judge by the avatar or the picture, I don’t. I actually go to the profile and take a look at the updates (of course, if it’s a pretty picture, I’m more than happy to check it out :) )

3. Do you interact? Or talk to yourself?

Oh yes, I’ve come across this many, many times. When someone follows me on Twitter, I always make a point to check out their Twitter page. When I’m there and I skim through the Tweets, all I see are “I made money, here’s the link”, “I’m going to rule the world, watch me do it here”, “I’ll follow you if you follow me but I’ll never talk with you because I just want to talk about me, click here to follow me”.

No follow.

Why would I want to follow a person that doesn’t bother interacting with other people? Even if I see just a couple of replies (I look for the @ sign) to a couple of different people, I’ll follow back.

4. Following 2,000 people – 300 following you – 2 updates?

Apparently, this is a strategy that got out of hand. I bought a product about Twitter and it was basically to follow as many people as possible and after a week, if they don’t follow back, unfollow them – then follow up to 2,000 people again to get new followers.

I’m not particularly against this strategy but if you only have 2 updates? In 13 days? While you are consistently following, unfollowing people… apparently, you’re not here to socialize. You just want people to know about your web site or whatever opportunity you’re trying to sell.

No follow.

5. Where are you?

To my surprise, I’m actually in the top 10 in Singapore Twitters when I did a Twitter Grader check (it may change depending on when you read this, you can check yours or mine if you’re curious! My Twitter ID: asheraw). I’m not saying that I have lots of fans and followers but I *am* seeing an increase recently for people who are following me.

There was a day when I had 2 pages of new followers (don’t know where they came from) and I checked through each and everyone of them. Took me a couple of extra minutes to do but in the future, it might happen again. I really don’t know – time will tell.

So if I missed out on following you and you’re really human – unfollow and follow me back, I should see your profile in the top few again when I look at who are following me.

If I’m already following you or follow you back, hope to get to know you better on Twitter! But if I’m not following you on Twitter, I hope you know why now.

Asher says: “How do you like the image of the eagle? I liked it a lot :) If you think this makes sense, feel free to share or tweet this to your friends with this short link: http://a.gd/f4f01d Leave me a comment about what you think as well!”

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