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Another Ten Reasons You Get Unfollowed

by Saul Fleischman on September 20, 2011

Unfollowed? In Twitter, I meant. Sorry, it would have made the title too long. I have done a couple of these, but here are another 10 reasons people tend to get unfollowed in Twitter, besides these:

1. You DM me with sales pitches.

2. You use a business account to tweet about your personal life (and give too many uncomfortable details).

3. You use a personal account to tweet only about your personal life and nothing else.

4. You are tweeting for someone else (or a company/brand/product) and pretending to be them. It feels like you are lying to me in every tweet of yours that I read.

5. I tweet your blog and your other creative projects, retweet your blog tweets, your creative everything, and stuff like your events that you could really use an extended reach on – and all you do is thank me; no reciprocation = you “don’t get it.” You are unengaged (or, you make it patently obvious that I am not half as important to you as you are to me, so, the hell with you).

6. You treat Twitter as a chat room with your close buddies, and forget the 12,000 others whose homefeeds and lists get all that chatter too.

7. You ask me to RT your content. You tweet me directly a link you want me to quote or post. If It’s good, I’ll find it and retweet it. Just make it good content; no one likes a beggar.

8. You complain constantly about your life. We all have problems, but if you don’t bring me value, I will unfollow you.

9. You DM me and you get weird. If you cross the line or get too personal, I unfollow you unless I know you personally.

10. You curse in every 5th post. I’m ok with the occasional four-letter word, but I don’t need to see that constantly. And who knows who I’m with when I am checking Twitter.

Also see the original article that I posted a couple weeks prior to this one: Ten Reasons We Get Unfollowed

About Saul Fleischman

Founder of emerging social media tool sites. Bootstrapping innovation with lean startup development teams. I do project management, user experience, PR, marketing and community development.

su.pr size it! http://su.pr/1dvpBh

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  • Anonymous

    I will admit, I’ve really enjoyed this post Saul.
    I may not have mentioned this before, but I’m starting to really enjoy your posts. You’re opinionated (and I mean that in a positive way), and are not afraid to call it like you see it. Of course, I don’t always agree those opinions, but I much rather disagree with someone who isn’t afraid to be vocal, than to always agree with a chicken sh*t who’s always playing it safe. Just figured I’d mentioned that. :P Thanks for sharing.

    • Saul Fleischman

      Thanks much, Dave! This is a basic one, but as you might have seen, I go deep – on both sides of the fence – as to Triberr and blog promotion in general. I am opinionated, and I point fingers. I feel like – with nearly everyone else feeling compelled to spew an unbelievable degree of false positivity – I am just going to “call it like it is.” This will get me a smaller audience, but it is, at least, genuine.

  • Klaudia

    Thanks for sharing that :) You just said it like it is. I guess there are different reasons why we are using Twitter, but I believe it’s safer to keep separate private from professional accounts.

    • Saul Fleischman

      Yes, Klaudia, though many people run a Twitter account for a business, if you are not careful, readers of those tweets may find you to be rather unengaged, late to reply, and not really knowing what’s going on at the company so well. THEN they suspect that someone is being ingenuous by tweeting for a business. Its a little dangerous, thus.

  • verified ✔

    I think posting pictures of “you with the goat, the duck and the sheep” will probably get you unfollowed pretty damn quick [at least by most people] ..

  • Samantha Bangayan

    Amazing list, Saul! =) I wholeheartedly agree! What I especially vibe with is the idea of wanting to connect with real people who are not only interested in building a relationship with me too, but who are also positive influences! It’s always beneficial to surround yourself with good people who encourage us to be better either directly or by setting a great example. =)

  • Kristi Hines

    All valid points, although you know I’ll have to touch on this one..

    “5. I tweet your blog and your other creative projects, retweet your blog tweets, your creative everything, and stuff like your events that you could really use an extended reach on – and all you do is thank me; no reciprocation = you “don’t get it.” You are unengaged (or, you make it patently obvious that I am not half as important to you as you are to me, so, the hell with you).”

    I have seen some popular people get beat up on this kind of thinking, but you have to look at it from their point of view. Some people (luckily) get hundreds, maybe even thousands of retweets a day. If they spent their time tracking down everyone who retweeted them on a regular basis, even just to thank them, they would probably not have time to do anything else. And if they tweeted content from all the people who tweeted them, then they would have have a huge mess of tweets coming from their Twitter account.

    So essentially, if I wanted to reciprocate, I’d spend all day long backtracking the people who tweeted me, then have to find something of theirs that would fit my audience. I used to do this, and while I really loved getting to know my audience, I no longer had time to write my own content anymore or get the work I get paid for done. I work a full time job, then part time as a freelance, and on top of that maintain my blog and social activities, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. So it’s just not realistic to expect people to reciprocate all the time.

    It also goes back to the relevancy thing. I have people who tweet me, comment on my blog posts, etc. I go to their site, on the other hand, and it’s about blackhat SEO. I can’t tweet about that as I’m not for it. Simple as that.

    Then I had a relatively unpleasant experience where this guy was gung-ho about tweeting everything I did. His blog, on the other hand, was 9 out of 10 times nothing but “I hate this person” and “I’m stoned today” posts. He was a great guy otherwise, don’t get me wrong, and occasionally he posted stuff I could tweet out (in hopes that my followers didn’t go check out the rest of the site). But eventually, I had to draw the line of what I share because of the content on the site as a whole. He, in turn, got really pissed off and started bad-mouthing me on Twitter, posts, etc. because I was no longer reciprocating. So really I wished he had never bothered “helping me” at all as it turned into a bigger mess than it was worth, regardless of how great his reach on Twitter was.

    I, of course, expect no more from others than I would hope people expect out of me. There are people I tweet regularly, almost every time they post. I don’t get thanked by them, and they have never tweeted my content. I’d go so far as to say they may not know I even exist (although one time the guy with over a million followers I figured never thought I existed mentioned me as an example of something good in a presentation at a conference). But when I get thanked by my followers for sharing a great post that helped them out, that is the reward – that is the benefit. When I get called out as a great curator of content on Twitter, then I feel I’ve won, more-so than if the blogger who wrote those posts just said thanks or tweeted something at random.

    I wrote a whole post on the topic a long time ago, but it still resonates with what I think about the topic – http://ariherzog.com/should-you-expect-reciprocation/.

    • Saul Fleischman

      With social media, I experience roughly three “virtual slaps in the face” weekly. Like the idiot “gung ho” guy you wrote of. Or the bozo who wants in one of my tribes (Triberr) – but has terms for me, for my tribe to be graced with his presence. These occurances remind me of my favorite truth: “no good deed goes unpunished” – the story of my life…

      The point I made about sharing for others and finding that they wont return the consideration: kindly note than in my example I refer to those those who do clearly notice what you do for them – since they’ll always thank you. They show that they don’t “get it” as for social media reciprocation, or are aloof and unappreciative when they and you know damn well that what YOU did for them was, say, Stumble their blog, or retweet not just their pithy quote, etc., but help them spread the most important of their own material: their blog or an event they are running.

      As for the “superstar” thing, the person who gets hundreds (sorry, Kristi, I think its a scant few who get thousands) of retweets and thus does not have the time, sure, okay, fair enough. Its the person who does notice them all, and never fails to “TK” me (thank) when I give his message some further reach – but will not once return the favor: they are going to stick out to many as exhibiting bad “Twitter karma.”

  • Keri at Idea Girl Media

    Well, #^&% @osakasaul:disqus ,You just lay it on the line, don’t ya?? {kidding}

    I’m sure you share these thoughts with….MANY. :D

    As one that also calls a spade a spade — Perfect! Thanks for making this post!!

    ~Keri

  • Samantha Gluck

    Really great post! You’re right on at every point. It doesn’t immediately cause me to unfollow someone when they never reciprocate because I often RT others’ tweets, simply because they ROCK. I don’t like sales pitches over DM. If you want to pitch me, do it in the open on Twitter or somewhere else. I do DM friends to ask them to help me promote specific events (OK, I’ve only promoted ONE event, and it’s the one I’m working on now), but I know that my day will come when they ask the same of me and I will come through.

    I worried about asking people to help promote the event, but it’s a great opportunity and a good portion of the funds are going to a charity I set up to help a young man with cystic fibrosis get a life-saving double lung transplant. So, I thought: what the heck? So far, no one has yelled at me, but not much play on the event yet. :-(

    • Saul Fleischman

      Thanks, Samantha. Its wonderful when you can get good things done – and asking for help is in order. But yeah, it irks me when you go out of your way to do something for someone, and maybe more than a few times – and they think a thank you is actually enough.

      • Samantha Gluck

        Most times, for me, a thank you IS actually enough. Most of the things I do for others, I do because I want to do so and truly expect nothing in return. But, on occasion, something comes up (like this event I’m promoting) that is close to my heart and I ask for help. It disappoints me, when their response is one of annoyance or no response at all. I’d rather someone say to me, “You suck, kiss my a*s!” than just offering apathetic excuses.

        • Meredith Allison @RockTique

          Samantha, I completely understand Saul’s point of view here but yours is one many of us need to recognize, truly selfless! I don’t have a ton of followers but I have some loyal ones…It would be my honor to tweet your cause. You can find me on twitter @Rocktique, just tweet me that it’s ‘you’ & I’ll follow so you can DM me…

          • Saul Fleischman

            aw, that’s so sweet. CC: @SamanthaGluck:disqus Thanks for weighin in on my blog – and taking a stance.

  • Gracey Castro

    Great points!

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