FredMcKinnon.Com

Hey Everybody,

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In lieu of my traditional “FreePlay Friday” or “Fitness Friday” posts – I want to take today and tomorrow to discuss some changes to the way I’m using Twitter.  I’ve been planning this post for a couple of weeks and just today, received an email from someone via my website. They said “I tried to dm you on Twitter, but you aren’t following me” ….

For those who have no interest, I hope you’ll join me back here on Sunday for “Sunday Setlists”.

My Original, Follow-All Twitter Strategy:

Several months ago I jumped aboard the strategy that many prominent bloggers promoted – the “auto-follow” or “follow everyone” strategy.  Using TweetLater.Com, I setup my @fmckinnon to follow everyone who followed me.

I started following A LOT of people – including a lot of trash.  My Twitter feed was impossible to keep up with.

Enter TweetDeck’s ability to create custom groups.

Now my life would be simple – I’d simply add the people that I “really” wanted to follow in a group called “My Network”.

This works.  But I was still unhappy with the fact that spam and porn0 people were constantly showing up in MY timeline.

So … I turned OFF the Auto-Follow feature, and slowly began blocking and unfollowing the worthless or irrelevant followers in my “All Friends” column as I saw them appear.

My Current, Revised Twitter Follow Strategy

So here I am today.  What’s the new strategy?

I created a custom rule in my Apple Mail program to filter all “New Follower Notification” emails from Twitter into a special folder I created called “Twitter Requests”.

Problem #1: that’s yet another thing to do on my ever-growing list of tasks that needs to be ever-pruned.  I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of those emails, unread, right now.  I finally just turned off email notifications.

Problem #2: as much as I hate to see porn0 twitter profiles in my feed, I hate having to view their follower emails as well.  Sure, there are no avatars or pictures in those emails, but I’m not stupid.  Some of the usernames are sensual and graphic.  Some of them lead you to “wonder” – and that wonder causes me to “click” – and that “click” could cause me to stumble.  I do not want to see it.

So how in the world do I follow you?

Well, if you have read this far, I’m glad you asked.  I will follow you when:
1 – I find you myself, and choose to follow you.
2 – I see you interacting with other people I follow, and see that your communications are relevant to my interests.
3 – You are following ME, and interact with me via @replies.  I monitor my @reply (mentions) column and if I begin to have interaction with you, I’ll definitely follow you and add you to the “My Network” tab.

Oddly enough, now the spammers have learned that trick, and my “Mentions” column is filled with spam every day too.  Here’s a stupid example:
“natural tinitus remedies – URL @fmckinnon”.  duh.  BLOCK.

Tomorrow, I’m going to do a simple blog on “Why I Unfollowed You on Twitter”.  Be sure and check it out tomorrow!

In the meantime, I’d love your feedback and comments – just leave a comment below!