The most basic element of Twitter etiquette, once you get past your first 140 characters, is this whole business of following. Who is following you, who are you following, are you following everyone back, is everyone that you’re following following you back?
Believe it or not, how those numbers work out actually says a lot about you.
Take the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, for example: with over 1,170,000 followers, he’s following back around 200 people, a lot of them are in his real-life social circle. He tweets about Digg, tea, and rock climbing, but he’s enough of a cewebrity to have over a million people follow him to hear his news, since you never know when he’ll be on Jimmy Fallon hocking social media to the masses. I follow him myself, but with a ratio of 1:6000, you can get the impression he’s pretty inaccessible over twitter.
A cewebrity who tries a bit harder to be accessible is Cali Lewis, the host of Geek Brief TV. With over 50,000 followers, she’s actually following back more than 4,000. A ratio of 1:12 is a valiant effort, but following more than a few hundred people is a tall order. Especially if you’re as super-busy and productive as Cali.
If you’re looking for perfect balance, then look no further than Guy Kawasaki. The man behind both Truemors and AllTop follows nearly as many people as follow him, ball-parking in the 170,000 range with almost a 1:1 ratio. He admits himself that there’s no way to follow a twitter stream of that many people. Kawasaki says that he follows everyone back so that he’s accessible to everybody via direct twitter message, which is a philosophy I subscribe to personally.
On the opposite end of cewebrity, if you’ve set up a new Twitter account and started off by following a few thousand people right off the bat, people might assume you’re a bot or a spammer. They’re pretty common on Twitter since Ellen and Oprah started Tweeting. So my best recommendation is to never let your ratio get too “following-heavy”, lest you find yourself cast off as a bot and ignored by people you’d like to start a Twitter rapport with. Try adding no more than about a hundred people at a time when you go on a following-frenzy.
So when it comes to your following Twetiquette, take a look at your personal or corporate brand, because you’ll want your follower ratio to reflect it.
About Matt Campagna
As an avid Web 2.0 contributor to online media, Matt Campagna currently directs the webseries "WHIRtv" for The Web Host Industry Review, as well as the award winning film preview and review webseries "Your Geek News" (YourGeekNews.com) and the the popular irreverent vinology webseries "Naked Wine Show" (NakedWineShow.com).
He also owns and operates Campagna Brothers Independent Pictures with his brother, Jeff, where Matt has produced, written and directed feature films like the Irish documentary "Roots of a Man" (RootsofaMan.com), the critically acclaimed Post-Apocalyptic Spaghetti Western "Six Reasons Why" (SixReasonsWhy.com) and its in-development follow-up "Roll the Hard Six" (RollTheHard6.com).
In addition to independent filmmaking, Matt has co-founded the "Mississauga Independent Film Festival" (MIFF.ca) to celebrate other Canadian independent filmmakers, which is going into its third season in 2010.
Follow him on Twitter @MattCampagna
Watch his film production videoBlog at MattCampagna.com
Read his IMDB Profile at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2098457/
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