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It’s an almost daily occurrence. I get a notice that someone has stopped following me on Twitter. I don’t recognize this person or organization that has decided they aren’t interested in my tweets any longer. I hadn’t even known they were following me until they stopped. My total number of followers (that all important number on which hardcore Twitter users hang their self-esteem) remains steady because some different person that I’ve never met or heard of has started following me… at least for a few days.

So what’s happening here? In all likelihood, these people are following me in the hopes that I will follow them back. From what I can tell they don’t care about hearing what I have to say or starting a conversation with me. But when Twitter was still a fledgling social media startup, it was customary to follow anyone who followed you. Some would say that reciprocal following is still the appropriate etiquette today.

Ultimately you will decide how you want to use your Twitter account, but you have some options when deciding how you want to dole out your Twitter follows. Spoiler alert: my recommendation is the third option mentioned below.

1.) Auto-follow

With this approach you reciprocally follow anyone who follows you. You can even set up third-party Twitter add ons that will take care of the following for you. Perhaps appropriate when Twitter was just starting out, I’m not a fan of auto-following these days. Not only do you get inundated with a stream of tweets from people you don’t know or care about, you’re also rewarding “Twitter spammers” who follow thousands upon thousands of accounts just to inflate their own number of followers. It’s not too melodramatic to say this practice is bad for the social economy of Twitter.

2.) Ignore New Followers

On the other end of the spectrum you can simply ignore any stranger who follows you out of the blue. That’s not to say you don’t follow anyone, but when you add a new follower it’s because you found them and are interested in what they have to say. It doesn’t matter who is following you. I personally feel like this devil-may-care attitude is a step above auto-following, but it certainly doesn’t leverage the power of a social media network like Twitter.

3.) Selectively Follow

When I learn someone new is following me on Twitter, I’ll usually check out their Twitter page. I’ll look at the quick bio and read some of their latest tweets. If I find value in what they are talking about, then I follow them. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that new people follow me all the time that I don’t even know about. But there are a very intelligent few who don’t just hit the follow button and call it a day. They mention me in one of their tweets. Something like…

if you want a good web guy in indianapolis, you could do worse then @claymabbitt

When I see that tweet, of course I go check the sender out.

I think selectively following is hands down the best approach. The power of a strong social media network like Twitter is you can make connections and start a conversation with new people. You just have to be smart about it.