Fifteen Top Ways to Get 'Unfollowed' on Twitter

Jun 08, 12 | 12:06 am

By Courtney Rubin

"Tweet and grow rich."

That's the advice from Steve Strauss, author of The Small Business Bible.

But more tweets definitely do not necessarily equal more money, suggests a new study. In fact, tweeting incessantly may lose you followers faster than you can gain them.

Econsultancy, a digital marketing company, has been running an online poll to pinpoint the major reasons for unfollowing people on Twitter.

Over-tweeters. "It would appear as if the worst crime you can commit as a Twitter user is to be too noisy," the study says, noting that 52 percent of respondents clicked the Unfollow button for a user who sent out too many tweets.

Incessant narcissism. Nearly half of those polled (48 percent) unfollowed someone because of too much self-promotion. How much is too much? If you think you may be guilty of too much, you probably are. A couple of specific complaints the study collected: "People who RT their #FFs" – for the non-Twitter-savvy (i.e., retweeting Follow Fridays). Also cited was, "Companies constantly retweeting every scrap of positive customer feedback they've received ever."

Posting too much spam. Some 47 percent of respondents cited this as the reason to Unfollow.

Not interesting enough. Here 43 percent jumped ship. Sounds like the tennis star Maria Sharapova was onto this when she told reporters at the French Open last week that her day-to-day schedule is too dull for Twitter. "Sometimes I get bored with myself. I mean everyday routine things like, for example, eating pasta in a restaurant. I don't think that the world should know or wants to know that I'm in a restaurant having dinner," she said. One rule of thumb: If it would bore your friends in real life, it will certainly bore your followers on Twitter.

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