Open Thread: How Do You Choose Who to Follow or Friend on Social Media Sites?
Posted December 30, 2009 in Open Thread 22 Comments »
Here at Freelance Folder we write quite a bit about social media — and with good reason too. Most freelancers are involved with social media in one way or another.
Most freelancers would also probably agree that social media can be a helpful marketing tool, a good way to connect with other freelancers, and even a unique way to find work. Fortunately, freelancers who are seeking to grow their business through social media have many choices ranging from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, and more.
No matter what social media platform you choose to get involved in, there’s one question that you will need to answer. Who should I follow or friend?
We’d like to get feedback from the readers on this one:
How do you choose who to follow or friend on social media sites?
Here are some known methods for choosing followers or friends on social media sites:
- Follow well-known industry figures
- Follow personal friends and acquaintances
- Automatically follow everyone who follows you
- Use another demographic (location, interests, etc.) to select followers
- Follow only popular people (those with many friends or followers)
Do you use one of the methods above to select your friends and followers? Do you use a combination of methods? Or, do you select your followers according to some other criteria not listed here?
Share your method for selecting friends and followers in the comments. If you like, you can also share a link to your profile on your favorite social media site so that we can friend or follow you.
About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 19 years of professional business writing experience. If you liked this post, then you may also enjoy Laura’s blog about her freelance writing experiences, WritingThoughts
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22 Comments
Joey Wong
December 30th, 2009 at 8:35 amI search for people that might be interested in my service and follow them on twitter hoping they would follow back.
LukeSF
December 30th, 2009 at 9:01 amPeople I follow/friend are usually 1) those from my niche (design) and I get inspiration and skills mastering from them and their social activity and 2) those from my potential clientile from whom I get a better insider vision of needs and likes… Second group is also those from whom I get better understanding of some overall processes and trends… say, gadgets, internet development, marketing, etc
And main rule I tend to keep to, these people I follow/friend have to be active… better say even proactive… In terms of Twitter it’s ideally someone who has more tweets than retweets and whose overall tweet count is in hundreds…
Jenn
December 30th, 2009 at 9:44 amAt this early point in my career, I follow anyone I can learn a lot from, frequently. I search by keywords on twitter, find a few favorites that have valuable articles to read on blogs, and then let that branch out to their sources or followers/ followees.
As far as friends that are on twitter, I follow them but they don’t seem to like it for personal use. I generally separate facebook from twitter and blogs, as fb I see as a personal social site and not so much for business.
James NomadRip
December 30th, 2009 at 10:15 amI also follow people who I want to learn from or who says things I am interested in. I don’t follow back everyone who follows me, though I look at who they are and if they interest me at all.
MARY E ULRICH
December 30th, 2009 at 10:37 amGreat topic! I am really struggling with this. I have lots of questions about other SM formats, but here are some Twitter examples,
I’ve read some of the SM experts’ ideas that say you should follow everyone, but then only pay attention to the ones who contact you personally. (@)
The problem with this, some bizarre people have been starting to follow me and my “weird” radar is making me NOT automatically refollowing everyone. Also I have read that there are “services” which say: “if you follow this person, you will want to follow these other people.” I don’t want the “weird” folks to make me a target for other similiar bizarre types. So now I am in cautious mode. Having lots of followers-just to have lots of followers doesn’t seem like a viable strategy to me.
I decided to filter and “list” all new people on Twitter. At least from today forward, the lists will help me find folks.
I’ve joined Tweetdeck and try to at least scan all the tweets. I look for information and links for the people I know and admire. Usually I can only find a few and am disappointed because I know some of my favorites tweet often. I need to learn more about Tweetdeck and figure out how to find my favorites.
All help welcome. Twitter: maryeulrich
MARY E ULRICH
December 30th, 2009 at 10:39 amAnother question. How do you put an avatar on your site? Is there a profile page somewhere?
LukeSF
December 30th, 2009 at 10:41 amI guess in most cases the avatars come from a gravatar service… which shows an email-bound image wherver it’s supported… it’s really convinient… Check it here http://www.gravatar.com
Melek
December 30th, 2009 at 10:54 amon Twitter, I follow based on their most recent posts (are they talking about things I’m interested in) and on their bio. I also take into account their following/followers ratio…if it looks really out of whack, that may affect my decision.
Laura Spencer
December 30th, 2009 at 11:48 amGreat answers everyone!
I knew that different people used different methods for this.
Speaking for myself, I tend to follow those whose blogs I admire as well as those who interact with me. I also look for companies who are currently clients or might become a client.
I don’t autofollow everyone who follows me because I feel that is a good way to get a lot of spam in your Twitter stream.
Keep the answers coming, though. This is interesting.
Karen Swim
December 30th, 2009 at 11:53 amMy strategy has changed over time. I am fairly open in who I follow and don’t restrict it to my industry or niche. It’s good to gain the perspective of those you might never get to know through your normal course of business. I follow people/brands that interest me, whether that interest is personal or professional. I enjoy meeting new people and find that the relationships are absolutely the best part of social media. My favorite sites are Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sterling-Heights-MI/Words-For-Hire/11474077587 and Twitter, http://twitter.com/karenswim. I would love to connect with any of the great readers here.
James Armes
December 30th, 2009 at 12:20 pmOn twitter, I use searches to find people I’m interested in. I also use hash tags to make it easier for people who are interested in similar subjects as I am to find me. When I get a new follow, I read through some of their latest tweets to see if they are somebody I want to follow. If I see the same tweet several times, I’m not likely to follow. I also use Twitter’s new list feature to keep track of the people I care about the most.
Denver SEO Solutions
December 30th, 2009 at 12:38 pmI’m pretty targeted with whom I follow or friend. Kinda like when your building an email list, 100 people that you know are interested in what your doing or providing can be more effective than a 1000 randoms.
My friends or followers consists of the big dogs in my niche so I continue to learn, a few personal friends which allow me to be more comfortable and active, those who are also freelancers we got to stick together, potential customers in my specific area who are active participators, and a few people sprinkled in either because they listed me or I might just like their personality. I don’t follow just cause you followed me, looking for relationships in which both parties can benefit in some way or another.
Domenick
Luke Jones
December 30th, 2009 at 1:01 pmI do several things to be honest.
Click ‘follow’ me on Twitter if they have a nice site with good content/subject matter
Follow people who are interactive and have spoken to me, offered help etc in the past
Follow people who seem to provide users with insightful tweets, articles and so on and so forth
Follow people who are genuinely interesting or have good stature within the community – ie John O’Nolan etc
If I get a new follower I do the following:
Check for previous Tweets, their content, timeframe etc
See their follower:following ratio – anything above 1.0 I tend to ignore
If they are a complete stranger, just ignore.
Lexi Rodrigo
December 30th, 2009 at 1:11 pmGood questions, Laura! I’m not at all strategic about using social media. Facebook is strictly for personal, real-life friends and close online networks.
As for Twitter, I follow anybody:
- I’d like to learn from
- who’s seems interesting me
- who interacts with me first (except for spammers, of course)
As I said, I didn’t get into Twitter with an agenda, much less a strategy, so my Twitter friends are a mish-mash of my various interests and niches. It’s not ideal, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Amber Weinberg
December 30th, 2009 at 2:16 pmI only follow people who either 1) Give great advice or links or who 2) actively talk to me and answer my own tweets. I once followed a bunch of “industry leaders” but their tweets were useless non-point items so I stopped following them.
Inside the Webb
December 30th, 2009 at 5:20 pmI am always looking to befriend others who may be interested in my site in similar niches. Things like web design, graphic design, Adobe software, programming, blogging, making money online… really anything relating to the internet will draw in my readers attention. These are the types of people I try to follow, but to each his own I suppose!
Steven Corbett
December 30th, 2009 at 6:39 pmGreat topic, and I’ve enjoyed reading about the thought processes that you all use to determine who to follow!
I follow leaders in my niche, potential clients, and web/tech people in general that I feel I can learn from.
I don’t follow everyone who follows me- I check each new follower out and only return the follow if they are actually relevant and personal.
I really like what Luke mentioned about the following:followers ratio. I generally take that into account as well.
Nat C
January 6th, 2010 at 3:59 pmI follow people for different reasons. When I first started social networking I followed celebrities and peole who I thought would be interesting, but since then I have changed strategies and now I look for people who post relevant links and who will interact and respond to comments.
Tweet Adder
January 18th, 2010 at 12:33 amTweet Adder allows you to unfollow people automatically.
With the tweet adder software I can set the number of people I would like to unfollow and let the software do the work for me.
With this amazing hands free tweet adder unfollowing feature, I can set the maximum number of peole I want to unfollow per day and at how many seconds I would like to do the unfollowing.
For instance, If I want to unfollow people 100 people a day between 5 and 10 seconds, I can set my Tweet Adder software to do so, without any interaction from me at all.
Many people may ask why would I need to unfollow people on twitter. Well their are several reasons why a twitter user may want to unfollow users. One being maybe that person isnt following you. Two, maybe you are getting too many spammy twits, and three you want to kind of refresh you twitter account and I will speak on that in another post.
Some Features
tweet tools
auto-unfollower
follow unfollow
Wanted to share this with you guys!
Online Outsourcing
March 6th, 2010 at 6:44 amFrom whom can we gain the valuable source of community towards the marketing … is the best method to follow them.Your ideas to select the approach of the friends and followers for the social media of the online communication will lead the business with a high level modification.keep sharing.
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