Two days ago, I decided I was fed up with watching so much garbage filter through my twitter stream on my personal account (kbloemendaal). I had talked to Rob from Rob’s Web Tips, and Mike Stenger about the reaction I might get from my followers. Both said I would probably lose about a third of my followers.
At the time I had 2900 followers, so I figured I could handle losing 1000 followers, especially since most of them would be robots anyway.
I looked at several unfollow apps after spending several hours using Hootsuite to manually go through my followers and unfollow ones that I had never actually interacted with and deciding that was getting me nowhere.
I ended up using UnfollowAll. It was simple and easy to use, I did have to run it a couple of times to get my followers down to zero. After it was done, a mix of emotions went through my mind, including panic and relief.
I am trying to have a new outlook on Social Media in general, but my main source is Twitter. I used to think of it as: Get followers, self promote, make money. Big FAIL!
I am slowly adding people back to my following, and tweeted for a response from those that weren’t robots to reply to me and I would re-follow them (only got 2 responses!). I also had a few lists I was following that I was able to go through and pick my favorites to re-follow.
My purpose for all this is that I think you are using twitter all wrong, it was me that was using twitter all wrong. I wasn’t able to have any conversations because there was so much noise in my stream. Self promotion, famous quotes from bots trying to keep twitter from knowing they are bots, and just plain ramblings.
If I haven’t re-followed you yet, let me know by leaving me a comment or sending me an @reply. Even if I am not following you, I always answer @replies and mentions.
What do you think, is it rude of me to unfollow everyone? Would you do it?
Related posts:
I actually did this about 3 weeks ago. I had 1900 followers and was following almost all of them. I decided to use unfollowall as well. It took me 5-6 tries to get down to 0 which is fine (really handy site). I dipped just below 1000 followers a few days after that – I think my lowest point was about 989.
Since then I have been using Twitter a lot more. I have made a few great connections and can finally breath now that all the Tweets I see are in English, and most are relevant to me and my business. It is a relief, once you take the dive and get over the initial shock.
.-= Paul Roekle´s last blog ..7 Day “Action Plan” How To Enter Any Niche And Turn A Profit In 7 Days Part 1 =-.
@Paul Roekle, I have actually enjoyed Twitter much more since doing this too, and since it is about me enjoying it or I won’t use it, I think it was definitely the right move.
.-= Keith Bloemendaal´s last blog ..Removing DoFollow From This Site =-.
What not just use Twitter lists to filter what you see?
.-= Gail @ KeywordLuv´s last blog ..Better Twitter Retweets From Favorite Twitter Apps =-.
@Gail @ KeywordLuv, I simply didn’t have the time to go through 3000 people I was following to sort them into lists. I went on a follow everyone that followed me rampage for a couple of months, and quadrupled how many I was following in only a couple of months. The way I see it, the ones that unfollowed me were obviously bots or people that used automated appd to follow and unfollow people, so I am not missing them. I will gradually build up who I want to follow and it will be more selective.
I think it’s cool what you did. I am a passive Twitter user and I pretty much stay looking at my lists and rarely if ever view the actual stream.
I know that 80% of the people following me don’t give a rat’s arse about my Tweets, but it’s all good as far as I am concerned.
AL
.-= Allyn´s last blog ..Introduction To BackLink Stacking And Why =-.
@Allyn, Now that I cleared the clutter, I can actually see your tweets!
I have one list I keep up on my Tweetdeck, and right now I think I would like to keep it that way. Having to scroll sideways on tweetdeck to see more lists or clicking to another page from the twitter site takes too much of my time, and I am trying to streamline my ability to use social media while still getting th emost out of it.
.-= Keith Bloemendaal´s last blog ..Linking Out For SEO =-.
I actually just did this for @FrugalZeitgeist a few weeks ago and I must say my new screening of people to follow and the fact it’s easier to interact with a small pool has made me see some potential in Twitter
Thanks,
Forest.
http:/frugalzeitgeist.com
.-= Forest´s last blog ..Save Money On Printing =-.
@Forest, I agree, by clearing the noise and bots in my twitter stream, I see more potential to use it now too. I was surprised to see that some people I was following were tweeting 80+ times a day! that is pure noise and I think it is too much tweeting.
I did this two weeks ago. The best decision I’ve done since I started using Twitter. It’s an awesome feeling when you actually recognize everyone one your Twitter feed. I thought I could manage it all with Twitter lists and tools like TweetDeck and I did, but it’s nothing compared to the joy of having a readable “main feed”.
When all the people who you follow are there for a reason, it will make Twitter much more enjoyable. I’m following people I’m interested in, who inspire me or who I respect. If they choose to follow me back great, but it’s OK if they don’t.
People who are following people in hopes that they follow you back in attempt to “win” the popularity contest and the numbers game people play, make me sad. Twitter is a tool for building relationships and connecting with people, and maybe it’s just me, but I prefer getting to know 1 person over having 100 on my “list” I know nothing about.
.-= Antti Kokkonen@Zemalf.com´s last blog ..The games we play and the stupid **** we do to get seen online =-.
@Antti Kokkonen@Zemalf.com, That is exactly the trap I fell into, was working everyday to grow my followers, using different tools to do it, and then I realized I was doing that more than actually building relationships.
It’s all good Keith…I still hardly use Twitter….trying to figure out how to make it work for me.
.-= Todd @ Home Construction Improvement´s last blog ..DIY Foam Insulation =-.
@Todd @ Home Construction Improvement, I know you are extremely busy, but most important in finding out how to make it work would be to use it more. Even if you can dedicate 10min blocks periodically throughout the day and evening to interact with people, it would help.
There are a ton of people in your industry to follow and get involved with.
.-= Keith Bloemendaal´s last blog ..Update on Hot Blog Tips Future =-.
It all come to the conclusion of what you want to achieve with twitter in the first place. You see, if you know within your mind that, the people who were not following you have no impact in any way to hurt your twitter platform. In another hand, it all come down to what you are trying to accomplish with your twitter account.
If your primary reason is to use twitter to drive target traffic to your site and let your followers know what you’re doing on your blog, chances are, you had just made the right decision. Why? Because you wanna no who your followers are and how valuable and real they are to you.
I think you’ve just made a great and excellent move by eradicating the useless followers and push forward for the real twitter users out there. That’s it Keith. Have a pleasant moment there. Talk to you shortly…God bless
.-= Product Development Strategy´s last blog ..5 Keys To Targeted Internet Marketing =-.
I don’t follow everyone back on Twitter, I never have. I’m not prudish or anything but I want a two-way relationship. When I’m followed I go to their profile and if I see a bunch of promotions, no replys/RTs, automated junk from sites like Twitterfeed, or following thousands yet have no tweets I won’t follow back. Other clues are sales pages or shortened URLs for their website.
I don’t think you are rude at all, keeping it clean is best for everyone.
.-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..5 Money Making Tips For Newbies =-.
@Brian D. Hawkins, My problem was that I didn’t do that, I just followed anyone that followed me, no more….
.-= Keith Bloemendaal´s last blog ..Update on Hot Blog Tips Future =-.
Glad to see you decided to unfollow everyone Keith. Now you can actually ENGAGE with people who are actually following you and you can follow tweets from people you do care about..
Plus, think of it this way… the 1,000 people that followed you did not care about you anyways.
I hail you for your courage. I have a little over 40 followers on twitter and I only see garbage or robots. When you even try to initiate a conversation there are no responses only more robotic links or self promotion. I promote my heartfelt posts and get no clicks from twitter. So I might just take a leaf from you and unfollow all of them and maybe start again or not at all. This Social networking thing is so robotic and unemotional it rubs me the wrong way.
.-= Consolata@marriage,relationships,love,parenting,ramblings´s last blog ..Celebrating Women (4) =-.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now but keep forgetting. Never take a look at my home feed because it’s cluttered with irrelevant stuff, foreign language content and spam. For some reason Twitter keeps subscribing me to random people as well. :s
Thanks for the UnfollowAll link, hadn’t heard of it and will use it when I get around to clearing out my Twitter list
.-= Jason @ Make Money At Home´s last blog ..How I Plan To Take This Blog To 10,000 Subscribers =-.
“Two days ago, I decided I was fed up with watching so much garbage filter through my twitter stream on my personal account”
I don’t know many people who don’t agree with that! Although subscribers, or followers in this instance or great, if they don’t add value to you, they’re not worth it. Yeah, you may lose some reliability, but you will also make your life easier. You also eliminate the bots, the ones that are accounted for most of the spam.
Yes! Good job. Wish I knew of this last year when i just deleted the friggin account altogether. lol
2 outa 2900?
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..DEDC Updates – What the (Near) Future Holds for You and I! =-.
I have two Twitter accounts, one personal and one for IM. The second one is a total joke; what a stream of ad links and other garbage! I can’t believe anyone actually follows those links and buys anything, but what do I know? So much of IM is a pyramid scheme anyway. I think I’ll dump the IM account completely and have one less thing to look at every day.