It’s been over a year since I joined the world of Twitter. I use my account as a hobby, it contains none of my family or IRL friends. I find this gives me a certain freedom to express myself and the ability to block/unfollow at my leisure.. which is why you’ll find me on Twitter rather than Facebook.
FB is where I go to see old work colleagues rant about local news, get useful reminders of family birthdays or laugh at the ridiculous memes my friends have tagged me in. Sure sometimes it’s fun, but mostly it’s mind numbing– I love these people but we do not have the same interests at all!
Twitter is a different beast. On Twitter I follow those I find interesting, whose opinions I often agree with, whose recommendations I trust. To get the very best out of my Twitter feed I have developed a few of my own rules.
Some were taken from the unspoken Twitter etiquette I’ve learned and others developed along the way..
1. Personal accounts need personal touches, constant RTs put me off. If I’m thinking of following you I will scroll down your timeline to read some tweets written by YOU. If I want to connect with you as a person, RTs and Goodreads percentages won’t tell me anything.
2. Creators who only push links to their work bore me to tears. By all means tell me about your book/blog/craft etc, but don’t shove it under my nose 100 times a day– you’ll only guarantee I hit unfollow.
3. When someone unknown to me who follows 50k+ people appears on my list, typically they are not going to be very responsive. I always assume they are trying to boost their numbers and ignore them. They might be those pesky follow-to-unfollow folk.
4. I love newbies! I only started dipping in and out of Twitter & wordpress a year ago, I know how hard and self concious it can feel when you start out. I always try to engage with people under 500f who find me.
5. High follower count means nothing if the majority are bots, sales accounts or other people just trying to boost their own numbers. Who’s engaging with you then? Don’t blindly follow back anybody that follows you, you’ll only dilute your own feed. I know some people will follow back and mute the account but what’s the point of that? You won’t get an accurate reflection of your reach by doing this.
For WordPress I have an entirely different set of rules. I only need to see one post that interests me to be convinced. I love to skim through my WP reader on work breaks and lazy mornings so the more variety the better!
As for Instagram.. If you follow me you’ll know I pay zero attention! I have an account, it has ONE whole entire photo uploaded.. go me. I’m more of a reader tbh, but I do follow easily. I love an occasional scroll through everyone’s beautiful images, I just don’t have the time or patience to do my own!
Do you have a system for social media?
Am I making any fatal mistakes here?
Let me know..
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An Average Life 
YES to #1 and 2! I mean, I do automatically follow back most book bloggers just to be supportive, but I like using Twitter to actually interact with people and get to know them or their personality a bit, etc. So I don’t want to follow accounts that only retweet other tweets or post links or whatever. I want tweets from that person I’m following! Except I just don’t even follow random accounts who follow 10K+ because, like, you said, someone who’s following 40K people is prob never going to interact with me ever.
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Your rules make sense to me.
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