Twitter Spring Clean Up

It’s that time again when Spring is knocking at our door and we have to re-evaluate our organization whether it be clutter or just having a new direction overall.

A Clean Up is meant to be a good thing and is part of our scheduled maintenance we need to maintain to not fall behind or get too cluttered.

Applying the Clean Up to Twitter

As mentioned in my previous article with the 4 stages of Twitter, you want to try to maintain a balance of good followers who are not spammers and actually are beneficial to your following by providing good engagement.

You don’t want to be lopsided if most of your followers and the people who you follow are just numbers and have no main reasoning behind.

So what should you focus on when doing a clean up on Twitter?

1.)  People who don’t follow you back

Now as know most Twitter Rock Stars and Celebrities have a huge following and doesn’t follow many people back anyways, this does not apply to them.

This clean up applies to Twitter users who you chose to follow but are not following you in return or they may have been following you and recently un-followed you.  Take notice, look at their profile count and if you notice they have a balance ratio of following then more than likely this user will not engage with you and simply un-followed you in which you should un-follow them because it will be pointless to effectively engage with this person.

However if this Twitter user shows a trend where they don’t follow people back as much, then you might want to make a decision if you should wait for the return of the follow later or determine if this user brings value to your Twitter stream and decide then.

To find out who you are following and aren’t following you back or to find out who is following you and you haven’t followed back, use this excellent website below.

http://friendorfollow.com/

This is a great site that DOESN’T require your Twitter password in order to see the results.  Take a few minutes and play with this site to make some great Twitter Clean Up decisions.

2.)  Spammers

This is a no-brainer but we often overlook and forget to maintain a spam free Twitter Stream.  Take the time to go over some of your follower’s profiles and see what kind of activity they put forth.  If they are constantly spamming links and trying to sell themselves over 50% of the time then its time to clean them up.

Bottom line is take this time to carefully review whats going on lately in your Twitter stream and make a consciousness effort to clean up any spammers that may be harmful to your Twitter Stream.

3.)  Non-Engagement / No Value

This may be hard to spot or difficult to understand.  Having followers and following Twitter users who don’t engage much or provide no value to the Twitter Stream is really a useless friend/follower to have.

Social Media is all about the engagement and value we get from the engagement that makes it so popular.

If we have Twitter users who don’t respond to you when you try to engage them, or even having them constantly ignore the Twitter sphere should really be considered to be unfollowed or unfriended.

The other side of Twitter users who don’t provide value is really quite simple.  They don’t have to provide content per-say, but they do have to provide something that interests you like either being a good conversationalist, a person with great informational updates, or even a loyal reader/follower.  Whatever the reason is, just make a decision if this person provides value to you and if they don’t its ok, do a clean up and move on.  You will want to focus on moving forward with great followers/friends.

Building your niche and expanding your friends

If you are stuck or just want to find new followers/friends and don’t know where to begin to start finding people in your niche, below are 2 great Twitter Directory sites I highly recommend.

1.) Wefollow http://wefollow.com/

Wefollow is Digg’s founder Kevin Rose’s new Twitter Directory.  This is a great website that is fairly new to easily add yourself to Twitter Categories (limited to 3) to help you place yourself to be found and also to easily find Twitter people in your niche.

This however pure and simple but if you want a more advanced search feature, say for instance to find Tech Geeks by a geo location try below…

2.) Twellow http://www.twellow.com/

Twellow is an excellent Twitter Directory already long established so it has more data than Wefollow and also makes it very easy to search for specific terms in your niche.

Have fun with your Spring Twitter Clean Up!

Post from: Social Media Vision

Twitter Spring Clean Up

Separate Business with Personal

Remember that whatever you put online is exposed to the world and that includes family/friends, clients and co-workers.

It can be very easy to get caught in trying to gain new exposure by exposing content you may not want your co-workers or clients to see.

If you have personal profiles on Myspace and Facebook you may want to set your privacy settings to “Private” so you can screen who is allowed to see your site and who to keep out.

Be careful what you put online that may be inappropriate content

Always remember, if you choose to keep your profiles public, act if a client or your boss is looking at your profile.

What may seem appropriate to your friends and family may not seem appropriate to your business, especially if you are trying to promote your business on a personal profile.

Even though you may want to show your personality and individualism you may need to play the “PG” mode with your site which includes but not limited to the following:

• Party, Beer and Drinking related pictures and comments
• Racy and Indecent Pictures and comments
• Immature and offensive pictures and comments

Blog and Social Network Safely

You may of heard that most employers do random checks on Myspace profiles for job seekers and current employees.

People get fired and not hired because of inappropriate profiles all the time. You may think this is a violation to your privacy, but it’s up to you to keep your profile private.

Get into a habit of creating “Double Profiles” create a profile on Myspace solely for business purposes and the other for family and friends with a private setting.

Don’t be afraid to deny friend requests, especially if the site is your personal profile. I have denied many friend requests on myspace and I explain to my co-workers and clients that this is my private personal file, they will understand.

So the moral of the story is keep blogging, keep social networking but keep in mind your information is being broadcast to the world and be careful.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Don’t Mix Social Media Business with Personal Profiles