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Like many people, the start of the new year was a time for me to do a little professional house keeping. not cleaning houses for money, I’d be rubbish at that because I can’t even clean my own house very well for free. No I mean cleaning up my laptop filing system, clearing the back log of emails and tidying up my social networks. I took the opportunity to go through the list of people who I follow on Twitter and add them to lists that group them into my areas of interest. For example I have lists for “B2B marketing,” “Social media,” “Cloud Computing” etc.
The way that the twitter interface works means that I can see a full list of all the people who I follow, and then I can select an individual and add them to one of my defined lists. However, that view doesn’t give me a snapshot of that person’s headline, I just get to see their last tweet. At that time of year, that was mostly a carry over from Christmas or a New Year’s greeting; not very informative.
I Want to Know You Before I Meet Your Pets.
Here’s the thing: I was staggered at how many people had a meaningless headline (bio) on their Twitter page. For those people who I was not able to categorise because I couldn’t remember what they tweeted about the most, I had to go to their Twitter home page. With a bio that talks about how many children or pets they have or that they are “internauts” or “visionaries” or some such left me clueless about what interests them.
Your followers should know exactly what you tweet about because you are consistent in your tweets. Even if it’s two or three subject areas. That’s fine. You can continue to mix in some other tweets about your favourite sports team or that you’re trapped in a plane on the runway in a snow storm. What ever.
@Tolstoy: I Write Epic Novels.
Now I may not see all of your tweets; let’s face it, once you get past 40 or 50 on your follow list, it’s tough for me to see every tweet. But for heaven’s sake, make your Twitter Bio relevant to what you want people to know about you. It doesn’t have to be War and Peace, just a short but descriptive sentence; “I help startup companies get the finance they need to expand,” or “I’m at the forefront of poodle grooming fashions.” You decide but at least make it easy to work out from your bio.
Deciding whether or not to follow someone is like channel surfing on the TV; click! You’re gone!
Related Articles
- How To: Get More Qualified Followers on Twitter (socialmediatoday.com)
- Great Social Networking Cleanup of 2011 (toddrjordan.com)
Good read. I followed a backlink here to my article on 2011 Clean Up.
I too spend the beginning of each year clearing out the clutter – emails, subscriptions, and yep, social network contacts.
I try to not judge them as people but as contacts who do or do not add value.
If they’re inactive on Facebook or Twitter -gone.
If they’re haters or spammers – gone.
If they’re not interesting and don’t follow me back – gone.
You get the idea. It’s not a magic one button clean up but an ongoing effort. I did well the first several days but I’m already tired of the effort. Ha.
Cheers on your article.
Todd
aka @tojosan
Hi Todd. you said it. Folks that fur up your social graph, or whatever its called these days, are the ones that I try to filter out. However, even the people who bring value make it difficult by not telling us what they care about.