To be Followed, or UnFollowed? That is the Question!

Anybody else get totally annoyed with individuals or businesses following you on Twitter and the next day unfollowing you. Twitter etiquette suggests that when someone follows you, you typically follow them back, unless you don't share their views or the content of their tweets, which in that case you should probably block them. This is particularly important now that Twitter posts who follows you, or who you follow under the Activity tab for your followers to see. You might consider blocking them to prevent these names from being posted as something you endorse.

I don't know about anybody else out there, but I'm not interested in having my name associated or affiliated with someone's views I don't share, or could harm my reputation.

So that challenges the notion of automatically adding back everybody who adds you. The first thing I do is check to see how many followers the individual has, how many they are following, and most importantly how many tweets they have posted. Often, individuals who have one or two tweets and are following huge numbers and have low numbers of followers are not legitimate users.

Twitter has a policy of suspending accounts where the followers and following list are disproportionately matched. It's okay to have low numbers which you are following with high numbers of followers. This is common for celebrities, politicians, and major players in social media. But if the numbers are reversed, accounts are suspended.

So back to the issue of Twitter users following a user, and then unfollowing the next day. They do this to build this following list, because they have little interest in reading the tweets of individuals, instead they want to control the flow of information making it strictly one sided. I have no interest in the flow of information being one sided. I am equally interested in the opinions of others, as I would hope they are about reading my tweets.

So how do I determine whether people are doing this to me, because using Twitter doesn't give you that information on who you follow and who doesn't follow you back?  I use UnFollower. It's a great tool that notifies me of who unfollows me, who follows me, who I follow, and doesn't follow me back, and more. Even more importantly, it allows me to add more than one account to maintain with the mobile app.

In addition, it can be set up to automatically send a Direct Message (DM) thanking them for following you. I realize there are other tools out there that people are using, but I've been very happy with this tool. In any case, use a tool like this to keep things clean and tidy.