Garth’s Riff On FollowBack Courtesy

Garth Beyer

I had nearly 500 followers on Twitter four days ago. Something had changed and I lost almost 100 of them.

The reason behind it? Dunbar’s Law, or at least an attempt at it. I thought I would carry the 150 maximum of people in a group to the web. I would only follow 150 people who interacted, who had fun, who shared concrete content and who really connected. Four days ago, I spent an hour unfollowing nearly everyone who has never communicated with me or who I do not remember getting any links or information  worth reading from their tweets. I unfollowed roughly 900 people, half of which were people who were also following me. Keep that in mind.

After I cleared out those who I followed, my followers dropped increasingly. People who programmed their Twitter to only follow those who followed them, no longer followed me. What does this have to say about follow-back courtesy? A lot.

Taking my statistics, only 1/9th or 11% of your followers are only following you because you followed them. (A small percentage than what I would still assume to be true) This gives you an immediate sense that you are reaching people, that people care what you Tweet and have an inclination to interact with you. All false. For a person who has 4,000 followers that is nearly 500 of them that still have no clue who you are or care to know. Sure, that may not be a lot, but now let’s look at the number of people who I unfollowed.

Roughly 900 people I unfollowed because they had no interaction, no concrete content, and flatly, no care in the world that I exist. Which is fine – Remember, my purpose was to go after Dunbar’s law anyway, I am only wanting people of my Tribe. There’s no need to give a false sense of identity by following people who have nothing to do with my niche (other than for entertainment). This leads to the reason Twitter should get rid of the Follow-Back button.

Have you noticed that Twitter is getting less click-throughs, less interactions with multiple people, and overall less content. It’s all noise – no harmony. The reason why? Too many followers and too many people are just following back. I used to dedicate a couple of hours to reading content via twitter feed. After my second attempt, I realized how much passionate content was lacking. I merely had followed hundreds of people who had a similar interest thinking that they would want to interact over their tweets. Sorry though, I don’t think the lack of hot boys in the midwest has anything to do with public speaking. Nor does the other 899 people who we’re tweeting – roughly 45-50 people consistently tweet great information and interact continuously with people they connect best with. I am now only following around 50 people, far from Dunbar’s law.

Let’s look at Twitter from the should-be view.

Twitter should not be only about following people, it should be about interacting. Twitter should not have a follow-back button because you don’t want people to follow you because you follow them. Do you realize that if you have two people following each other, you get nowhere? Twitter should be about being a leader, connecting to other leaders, and teaching followers how to become a leader. To become a Twitter leader: create harmonic content, consistently interact with other leaders and passionate followers, and by all means, to become a Twitter leader, quit following people back.

 

Stay Positive & Follow Forward Instead

Garth E. Beyer

Garth Beyer
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