Who should you follow back on Twitter?

[reblogged from 2012]

If your Twitter activity is up where it should be, you’ll likely get some Followers before too long, sometimes in droves. If you wonder who to follow back, I have a few suggestions based on my own experiences. I actually should have named this one “who should you NOT follow back on Twitter”

Twitter Egg Avatar – several colors available – the default

First of all, never follow anyone back that you do not physically know until you go to their profile and skim their posts and mentions. Their profile image or avatar can tell you a few things about them. If they have the default Egg Avatar, it could be a warning, especially if they already have a lot of Tweets and Followers. If they only have a few of each, then it’s possible it’s a new account, but overall, with Social being what it is, they should have an avatar, hopefully a face.

Quote after quote – maybe a bot?

Another thing to consider is their Tweet quality. If it’s a few thousand quotes that might not be a good sign. As well, if it’s one after the other talking about getting more followers, that might not be good either.

3rd World Followers always make you look “genuine”

If you decide to follow someone relatively “benign” – those with 3000 quotes, or 3 Tweets and 6 Followers – expect to get an auto-generated DM (Direct Message) within seconds of Following them, often with something “To reward you for following me, here’s a link to something you will really like”.

Twitter DM for an amazing opportunity to reward me for following

These are probably not all that bad, and so long as you never click the link you’ll probably be okay and never hear from them again. Bots tend not to unfollow you, so it will add to your stats (if that’s important to you).

I highly recommend you do not follow back the 5,000 follower bots. For one thing Twitter really is all about authenticity, and if you are hooked up with these people, you’ll probably hate yourself for it later.

The quotes are pretty benign too, and if you want to fluff up your Tweet count and your activity stats, retweeting the occasional quote is pretty harmless, so long as it is meaningful to you and your followers.

Be careful – it’s a jungle out there