Clean up your Twitter stream in 12 easy steps
Sun, 10 January 2010After what seems like years on Twitter I had quite a following. And like all the social media experts recommend I was following everyone back.
Trouble is my Twitter stream was looking like a late-night infomercial. So, I stopped tweeting for a bit to concentrate on cleaning it up.
There are many programs out there offering to clean up your twitter account and get rid of spam. But I decided to do it manually — to see for myself who or what I was unfollowing.
This is my 12-step program for reclaiming my Twitter stream.
I started by unfollowing:
- All affiliate marketers. Time consuming, but well worth it. I don’t want or read unsolicited mail in my letter box. Why should I accept it online?
- Everyone whose avatar showed a large breasted woman in a bikini. Why was I being followed by so many of them on Twitter?
- Tweets promising to reveal the secret of ‘white teeth’. I have no idea what that’s about. My grandmother told me about using bi-carb (baking soda) to clean my teeth years ago. She also taught me about putting honey on Band-Aids to help my little cuts and grazes heal faster. I miss her — but not your tweets.
- Social media gurus tweeting their love and burning desire to share nothing but the latest tried and tested method to generate more followers — for a price. Get a life. Donate some of your time to charity without bragging about it.
- Entrepreneurs and internet marketers tweeting about ways to dramatically increase followers on Twitter. Sure they have umpteen thousand followers, but take a closer look at them and you will see @Wendysexy, @sexygirls, @FLATRATEFUCKING, @fuckbuddyfinder or @BowWowsucksDicks — is this really the sort of riff-raff you want associated with your name, company or brand?
- Guy Kawasaki. I now unfollow anyone who even retweets what he has to say. If I need to know meaningless information I can Google, Bing or Yahoo it. Yesterday’s meaningless information is just as good as today’s.
- Anyone sending a DM. No matter how friendly it sounds, it’s automated, and I am not going to be your special Facebook friend.
- Anyone tweeting about making money on the internet and the latest program they found that does it all automatically for you.
- Anyone tweeting a morally uplifting quote — and those retweeting them. It was bad enough reading them the first time.
- Tweets about real estate. I don’t really need to know about real estate conditions in Florida.
- Tweets about jobs — especially those that require you to have nothing but ‘basic computer skills and your own home computer’. Yes, I am sure Twitter provides a great way for agencies to let people know they are hiring, but I am unlikely to relocate.
- Mashable, and anyone retweeting anything from Mashable. Thanks, but I can log onto the web site myself if and when I want to. I even did once.
Most social media experts operate on auto-pilot and will drop you as soon as you unfollow them. My followers have dropped dramatically, but honestly, I couldn’t care less.
It’s an ongoing process. But I now watch my Twitter stream with more interest. I see tweets appearing in the distance like old friends, and I am reminded why I signed up to Twitter in the first place.
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ROCKET - now with its own domain name. All this and a whole lot less!
