To Follow or Not to Follow
As most of you probably know, my main Twitter account is @bethschillaci, but I also set up @villageworks a long time ago to keep it under my control. While I rarely use my company account, over the holiday break I decided I was going to use it more often in the new year as part of my overall marketing strategy. I logged into my VillageWorks Twitter account and found some new followers to check out. As I looked over the list, it made me think about what my “Follow Back Policy” should be for this account. What I mean by this policy is how am I going to decide who to follow back on Twitter.
As I see it, I have the following options:
1. Follow back everyone that follows me.
2. Follow everyone that does not appear to be spam, a bot or something completely inappropriate.
3. Select people based on their Tweet Stream (what they tweet about for those uninitiated) and profile. If they seem to have something interesting and relevant to my conversation, I will follow them back.
On my @bethschillaci account I started using option 2 and as my list of people I followed got bigger, I feel like I moved to option 3. I’m not sure when I made this switch and I’m sure I have missed a lot of interesting people and conversations along the way, but it worked for me.
I know you are dying to know what my final decision was for my @villageworks account, right? OK, probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I have decided to go with option number 2. Why? Because I want people to be able to get in touch with my company via direct messages if they choose to. I know this leaves the door wide open for spam messages, phishing scams and all of those unpleasant parts of Twitter, but I find it important that anyone should be able to legitimately reach me directly.
By now you are probably wondering if I have a point? I do, I think. Seriously, these are some of the things you are going to need to consider when using social media. Who you will connect with and how you will allow others to connect with you. It just takes a little bit of planning to get what you want out of social media.
What is your Twitter Follow Back Policy? Why?
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What is my twitter follow policy?
I’ve not had one, the brief use of social media to publcize both my business (local SEO) and publicize my clients businesses (local Frederick Md small businesses) has gotten me so much work I’ve not had time to tend to my twitter follow policy… but your post got me thinking:
I follow anyone who has a business that might be able to either:
1) possibly help one of my clients get work
2) I might be able to get them work
3) they might be able to get me work
In this economic environment, every one needs to find a way to “get more work”
My ethos is “best way for me to make money is to ensure my clients make money, ensure everyone who follows me makes more money as a result of their interaction with me”