Are You Following the Right People on Twitter?

Have you looked through your Twitter followers lately?

If not, you might want to take a quick glance through them. It’s pretty likely that you have no idea who half of your followers are.

One question you might want to ask yourself is, does this person providing me any value? Are they relevant to my interests or needs?

Make the most of your Twitter account. Even though you want to have more followers than people you’re following, don’t just follow everyone and anyone.

Someone whose only going to post about snowboarding or cooking might not necessarily be relevant to your interests, especially if you cannot snowboard to save your life or if every time you pick up a cooking book you tend to catch something on fire. No one wants you to burn the house down.

Twitter and social media is all about engaging and interacting with others who share the same interests and passion as yourself.

4 Tips for Following the Right People on Twitter

1. Stop Copying Followers

This isn’t a popularity contest. Refrain from just copying someone else's followers.

You might think that using a service to automatically follow your competitors followers is a fantastic idea, you might want to reconsider.

How many people are you following? 200, 400, 10,000? How many of them are actually relevant to you or your company? The number of followers you have doesn’t matter, unless they are active and engaging with you or your brand.

You don't want to follow someones sister or friends. That's a possibility when you're using something like Justunfollow.

The next time you stumble upon a competitor or colleague profile, think before you click the follow button. Consider doing a little research.

2. Unfollow

Don’t be afraid to click the unfollow button every once in a while. Think of as a little spring cleaning. You want to keep your following relevant.

Whether you've been using Twitter for 5 years or 5 months, there's a chance that you're following individuals that you've never engaged with.

Followers are great but if they are not contributing to your social media experience then they’ve got to go.

Just like a good spring cleaning, take the time to remove those followers who are inactive and not contributing to your to your productivity.

3. Industry Thought Leaders

Now that you’ve weeded out the weak, its time to go after the heavyweights. I’m talking about the best of the best, industry thought leaders on Twitter.

One of the reasons why people are attracted to industry thought leaders is the passion and valuable content they’re providing their audience and readers.

Here are a list of the top accounts to follow for inbound marketers:

HubSpot

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Seth Godin

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Gary Vaynerchuk

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Dharmesh Shah

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Mike Volpe

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Peter Caputa

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Brian Halligan

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David Meerman Scott

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Guy Kawasaki

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John Jantsch

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4. Do Your Research

Not sure if one of your followers is making the cut? That’s ok.

Before you click the follow button, do some research on that person. Check to see if their account is verified, are they posting, when was the last time they tweeted, what is their ratio of following to followers?

Those are all really good elements to look at. Read their bio. The 160 characters people have to describe themselves can say a lot about them. Do they share your interests?

Another great resource for finding relevant people in your industry is Twitter Lists. They can help you find relevant and influential people in your industry.

Social media platforms are a great tool for inbound marketers to share ideas, interact with customers, and learn best practices from the brightest minds in the business. However, it’s easy to get carried away with too many tweets and followers if you’re not careful.

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