5 Types of Accounts To Never Follow on Twitter

More and more people are using twitter to increase exposure for their business, get news, interact with their friends and more.  Ahead are some types of accounts you should steer clear of when getting started on twitter.

Once you’re “on” twitter and using it with some regularity, you will gradually start to pick up followers.  There’s nothing quite like that email alerting you that someone is “now following you on twitter”. But before you go and follow them back – which is generally the right thing to do, it’s wise to do some very brief recon of your new follower and see whether they will be of any use to you.

1) No Profile Picture/AVI – When an account has no profile picture and instead has just the standard issued “egg”, this is one of the first signs that the account may be one to avoid following.  There are exceptions of course.  Maybe it’s a friend of yours who just started the account but hasn’t set it up entirely. In general, I do not follow accounts back that do not have a profile picture.

2) No Bio Info – Another account to steer clear of is one that has no bio info.  Imagine if twitter were a bar and you walked up to someone and introduced yourself and they said nothing back. You asked them about what they did for a living and what activities or music they enjoy and still, no answer.  This is what having no bio info is like.

3) Spam Accounts – These are pretty obvious to spot because they usually have no bio and no profile pic.  While spammers have gotten smarter, they are still very easy to spot.  Often times they use a flashy picture of a woman as their AVI and their bio may contain a few sentences with some misspelled words.  If you have doubts about the accounts authenticity, you’re probably right.  To confirm them, quickly look at their timeline (tweets).  Spammers are easy to spot once you know what they look like.

4) Following 2,000 – When an account is “following” 2,000, this usually indicates that the user is a real person.  But the 2,000 is key because it’s the limit that twitter initially puts on each account at the start.  When you get a notification that one of these accounts is following you, there’s no rush to follow them back.  These users have, within the span of a few hours after creating their account, run around and followed just about every single account they saw until they hit the cap of 2,000.  Why would you want to be friends with someone who wants to be friends with everybody? (Except for me, of course)

5) Certain Celebrity Accounts – Following your favorite actors and actresses, tv personalities and sports heroes can be a lot of fun.  Some of them are fantastic on twitter!  Many are quick to get back to their followers, very witty in their comments on the day’s events.  But choose these people carefully.  Many of them will get very annoying after a while, posting so much that it clogs up your timeline and you’ll be tempted to unfollow them.  Never hesitate to do that.  You can build a list of your favorite celebs on twitter and be able to see their timelines without ever following them.

Evaluating someone’s twitter is easy. Go to their timeline and look at their tweets.  How often do they tweet?  What are they tweeting about? Do you see many @ replies? @ replies are a good sign that the person is engaging with others on twitter.

So here’s my plug…. Follow me on twitter @richsullivan.

And of course, listen to me weekdays from 2p-6p on 92.9 dave fm