(This post is way late. Due to Typepad issues I was unable to post, but here it is Twitter Tip Tuesday on a Friday.)
Starting out on Twitter can be a daunting task, because acquiring followers is more difficult than one would expect. You have to get out there and scour through Twitter profiles and proactively follow people, without knowing if they are going to reciprocate the follow.
Let's say you follow 100 people, maybe 50% of those follow you back. This means you are getting the updates of 100 people, but only 50 of those people are actually getting your updates, because they have not followed you back. Before you go and find more people to follow, get rid of those that did not follow you in return. Unless the person who did not reciprocate the follow is an influencer you admire or some other big personality, unfollow them. Don't receive updates from those that do not receive yours. (There are some ways to help encourage others to follow you back but I will get into those tactics in another post.)
The most important reason to unfollow, it to keep your Following/Follower ratio close together. When you come across someone who is following 300 people and only 50 of those they are following are following them back, it makes you wonder if they are *worth* the follow. It is natural to want to follow someone who appears to have a following, and it is equally as natural to get turned off by someone whose following/follower ratio is drastically unbalanced.
There is a easy (but not obvious) way to know if someone is following you back. Go to your Twitter homepage; click on your "following" link to access your list of those you are following; if you cannot direct message a person, they are not following you back; click the "remove" button to unfollow them. (See image below)
