Personal branding is a serious business these days. Social media has catapaulted the average person into centre stage, making the associations they surround themselves with and way they conduct themselves much more available for public scrutiny. Twitter is an interesting case as the very nature of what you tweet about is so very revealing. As with all social interactions, codes of conduct emerge. In the Twitterverse, the reaction to expect if you don’t tow the social line is ‘unfollow’. Company Twitter accounts are not exempt. So in the mix of individuals and small businesses, how many of the following Tweeter types have you unfollowed? In no particular order…

1. The one hit wonder

One outstanding tweet in the history of all tweets. Make sure you get the one hit before hitting unfollow.

2. The I’m-selling-something-moderately-useful but really don’t have much more to say type

Guilty of repeat the same url/ short url in between random babble.

3. The ‘two word and @ type’, closely followed by ’1 word conversationalist with 1000 tweets and counting type’

No concept of audience – try instant messager, you’ll be much happier.

4. The eat sleep and I said and I watched and I phoned type

Boring. Even if you are a celeb. Most of us are not fanatical fans.

5. The short url repeater or include your url on everything type

Believe it or not, we can tell that you are repeating yourself. It works the first time, but do you think people want to see the same tweets all the time?

6. The I’ve written a blog with a catchy headline and no real content just to show you my ads type

Of course the ad is bigger than the content of the blog entry. Very convincing. Nice work on the headline though.

7. I obsessively RT those I’m stalking

If they tweet it it must be good. Yeah. Good luck to you.

8. You’re pretty awesome

Instant unfollow.

9. Get quazillions of followers

Buy followers, join here to get followers, get followers instantly. Not everyone is interested in followers for the sake of followers. Conversation and relevance make Twitter much more interesting. Decide if you are after a mass medium or a targeted conversation.

10. The persistent self-retweeter

Easily spottable. Why do it? The tweet is devalued with your ego attached.

11.The celebrity everything-i-do-is-amazing type

Twitter has been very useful in demystifying some of the obsession with celebs. Poor celebs get exposed for being the normal folk they are, and in some cases, the annoying idiots they are.

12. The everything I tweet has multiple hashtags type

The blur of hashtags has made your tweet unreadable.

13. The trending topic uberfan

The equivalent of this is walking around with a sign above your head saying “look at me”. Important to distinguish the single trending topic follower from the spammer who might manage to get all the trending topics in one tweet. Someone should do a study.

14. Please retweet

I’ll RT what I want to, thanks.

15. Join my mafia/mobster family

Stop tweeting about being irritated by the invites – it’s free advertising! All power to them for getting so many mentions. Not a way to gain friends and influence, however.

16. No name, no bio, no icon

No follow.

17. No tweets

As riveting as an empty page is, there really isn’t much point in following you if you don’t interact. But I support the idea that some would just prefer to listen and not tweet, in which case your bio will keep you around.

18. Auto tweet

Wouldn’t be so bad if it was relevant, timed, or not a bot pretending to be human. Identify when its auto, or risk the assumption that it is all an auto response. Bots aren’t that engaging. Unless you happen to be one of the plants, houses or other objects that tweet, in which case, the bot is your voice.

19. Multi-tweeter

Identifiable by the concurrent fairly useless tweets. It’s too obvious a tactic to get some visibility. Surefire way to ensure all the tweets are ignored.

20. Other language

Nothing wrong with different languages, love that its a global space. If I can’t understand, well, I’m not following you, if you will excuse the pun.

21. Swearaholics

It demonstrates a serious lack of language ability if you need to waste your 140 characters on swearing. It looks ridiculous.

22. Tasteless self exhibitionists (from the ridiculous to the nude)

No need for additional explanation.

23. Shameless follow me or else types.

OK, so you have 20000 followers. If you don’t tweet anything interesting or relevant, then I’m still going to unfollow. If you have followed me first, then I’ll follow you if doing so is in line with what I want – not just because you have followed me. Worth noting – just because someone does follow you back, doesn’t mean they are reading your tweets.

24. The salesman @mentioner.

You really do get my attention when you use my name to sell your products. Such a useful service – identifying yourself as a spammer. Reaction? It’s wild – I do absolutely nothing. Thanks for the mention, though.

25. The followfriday follow me

There it is, the self-include somewhere near the end of the list. It’s ok to think you are great, but I can see that you think you are great. It actually shows a lack of confidence. You may get away with it once, but not if you do it everytime.

I hope you have enjoyed this tongue-in-cheek ‘unfollow analysis’ that I’ve compiled from various bits of evidence. If you are doing any of the above, it may help you to understand why you do get unfollowed. Focus on your Twitter strategy if you have one, be mindful that others are growing more impatient with the above, and are likely to become more ruthless at pruning their lists.

Feel free to share your personal unfollow tips.

Apply it to your business:

- Consider that you are likely to get a better conversion rate for time spent if you are targeted in your approach to Twitter, and everything else.
- Target audiences tire quickly of underhanded or insincere marketing ploys. Be genuine and upfront and your marketing may have a bigger and more sustainable effect.
- Step back and look at the marketing you are doing with an objective eye. Look at the sum of the whole too. How are you coming across? Would you buy from you?
- Have a strategy. Define what you want to convey, what you want to achieve and how you are going to do it.

Bronwyn Durand writes the Marketing Ideaology blog for JupiterJasper Practical Marketing.

25 Twitter tweeter unfollow behaviours is a post from: JupiterJasper's Marketing Ideaology blog