Editor: media140 Editor    Posted: Friday, November 20, 2009   Discussion: 2 Comments

It is #followfriday again. Love it or hate it – it is a Twitter convention which is hard to ignore. A previous post on this forum by Caitlin Fitzsimmons (@niltiac), on how best to manage the #FF deluge and simultaneously send traffic to your blog, has proved to be one the most popular on this site.

Below, Media140’s Man with the Mic, Glenn Le Santo, takes a look at the etiquette of the follow and the unfollow, both for individuals and for the increasing number of corporate accounts dipping their toes into Social Media via Twitter. Glenn, btw, now features regularly in the top 10 of UK Popular Tweeps on Twirus.com, beating @schofe, @CHRISDJMOYLES and even @MrPeterAndre. @stephenfry had better watch out.

Twitter works on following. Without followers, your tweets simply don’t get read. If you don’t do any following, you don’t get to read other’s tweets. That’s set in stone, you must follow and be followed back to have a meaningful Twitter experience.

Problems do arise when we consider who we should and shouldn’t follow, and which processes we adopt when deciding. I posed various questions about following on Twitter this week to tease out opinion on the rules, if there are any, of following and to see if any patterns emerge.

Although my response was very varied, I do think following habits are already clearly identifiable on Twitter. One blogger who picked up on the #2follow conversation was @Gazimoff. He has already gone away and blogged his thoughts on #2follow. His blog entry sums up the popular line of opinion among tweeters when he says:

“..most seemed to be selective about who they follow back. It seems that for most of us we tend to read up on who our followers are, scanning through their previous tweets and deciding if it’s someone we’re interested in following.”

@Gazimoff also notes that the process is often a long one, instant decisions are not necessary and mistakes can of course be rectified at any time with a click of the follow/unfollow tab. Time gives you a chance to see what they are tweeting and so decide if to stick by them or not.

Another respondent, @amnotfunny confirmed this line of thought with the tweet:

“I unfollow someone if they just constantly send a stream of drivelly tweets to everyone or send endless rt’s replying to things”

There are also many varied reasons why a tweeter won’t draw or maintain a follow.

As a tweet from @crispinheath says: “I don’t follow everyone back if they’re bots or sales focussed. I unfollow people that don’t tweet often or don’t share links”

I wondered about reciprocation of follows; do we get offended when people fail to follow us back? It seems that while some of us might well do, the general opinion is that it doesn’t matter too much in personal tweet relationships. I particularly liked @ogerrard’s take on
this:

“interestingly, not having to create a reciprocal bond with someone is why I prefer Twitter over Facebook.”

“on facebook if you want to read what I’m saying, I have to put up with your drivel too”

That’s the personal tweeter talking however. If you are running a business twitter account, it seems that an entire set of different ‘rules’
might apply. During our twitter conversation, @Gazimoff suggested that:

“if you are in the service business, you should engage with customers in the form that suits them, not you”

His subsequent blog returned to this point with some useful advice for business trying to chart their way through these choppy #2follow waters.

“Corporations may be fearful of a deluge of complaints heading their way through social networks, without realising that their great power is being able to gain instant feedback and respond to everyone at once instead of having to send out individual replies.”

One area which prompted plenty of debate was the cost to businesses of engaging via Twitter. A recent tweet exchange with @DuncanBannatyne had the entrepreneur contesting that businesses cannot follow every follower back – because of cost. Here, etiquette looks like it may have to be subordinate to bottom line. I agree to a point with Mr Bannatyne’s view that cost prohibits this level of engagement but I suggested that not following could have a negative impact on the value of his company’s social media campaign?

Engagement is such a key factor in the process it seems that not engaging carries significant risks. Although the tweet exchange with the man from the Dragon’s Den had seemed to me to go without any ill-feeling, Mr Bannatyne promptly made his feelings crystal clear on engagement by blocking me.

Fortunately, I found I wasn’t alone, despite the Scotsman’s rebuff, @Gazimoff differs with Bannatyne’s views too:

“The main concern when a business looks at using Twitter is cost – will it require substantial investment to engage with customers over Twitter? There’s no reason to suggest it would – customers already have access to their suppliers via phone, email or even face-to-face in a high street store.”
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