What is an Unfollow?
Just like you can choose to follow someone, you can also unfollow them. if you wish to no longer hear a person's tweets, for whatever reason, simply click their name to their profile page. Hover your mouse to the box under their avatar (photo) where it says "Following." You will get an option to "Remove" your follow. Click on Remove, and wa la. You have unfollowed someone.
You can always choose to refollow them again later if you wish.
Why would someone Unfollow me?
- You will probably get unfollowed if you tweet too much. How much is too much?
1. Consistently filling up everyone's screen with endless tweets. Let others talk too. Nobody likes a loudmouth. :)
2. Going outside your given Twitter real estate. Let's say that you ignore the 140 character rule and make a series of interconnected tweets. What's the harm? Well, you'll just tick people off. You are expected to follow the spirit of Twitter and that means 140 characters. The good news is that it's more fun to figure out tweetspeak, using extreme brevity as your guide.
With Twitter, remember to use restraint. While the Big Twitter Question is "What are you doing?" it's not a license to bombard the Twitterverse with EVERYTHING you are doing, every moment, all the time.
- You might also get unfollowed if people decide you are boring. Personally, this is fine. You don't find everyone else fascinating, do you? There will be some who simply don't enjoy your tweets. For example, there are a lot of Mommy Bloggers on Twitter. I don't have children and find talk about them tiresome. If a Mommy Blogger talks about kids too often, I will probably unfollow them.
If people simply don't think you're the cat's pajamas, it's fair for them to unfollow you. No need to be offended or complain about why.
- Some people get unfollowed because of their beliefs, whether political, religious, environmental or whatever. Again, this is nothing to get bent out of shape over. People have differences and that's okay. If I made tweets poking fun at Sarah Palin, some people might get offended. I might see a few unfollows. It's the price you pay for being yourself. :)
- If you are a real jerk, you might get lots of unfollows. While some people enjoy seeing people be rude on Twitter, I personally do not. Some people make a lot of foul-mouthed or nasty tweets about others. I simply unfollow them. Truthfully though, rudeness DOES build a following and gets attention. Think of what you want to achieve for yourself on Twitter, remembering that all tweets are permanent content on the Internet.
- Tweeps who only self-promote quickly find themselves alone. Posting only links to your latest blog posts makes you look self-serving and boorish. Be a well-rounded tweep. As long as your promotional link posting is kept within reasonable bounds, no one will bat an eye at you. I do enjoy having occasional updates on what my friends have published on Twitter.
- Scammers & Spammers on Twitter get unfollowed in droves. And then they get banned. I wrote elsewhere on this site about identifying Twitter Scammers. Make sure you never act like one! You are here on Twitter to connect with others, not pedal your wares. :)
As a rule, if you are friendly with others, share your life freely (but not obsessively), post your own links infrequently and are interesting in your own, unique way, you won't have to worry about losing followers. For those you do lose, just shrug and keep on tweeting. Those who like you and stick around are the ones worth keeping!
