I Ain't No Follow Back Girl!
With apologies to Gwen Stefani but really...
Your business should be using social media for two reasons:
1/ Brand Awareness
2/ Business Intelligence.
Brand Awareness we’re all pretty familiar with, the key metrics being how many followers you have and how much they interact with you. With business intelligence it’s practically the opposite - you want to follow as few people as possible so the good stuff doesn’t get lost in the firehose.
The problem is, the fastest way to gain followers is to follow people because enough of them will simply follow you back - boom - everybody wins.
Wrong!
This completely defeats the purpose of what you’re trying to achieve. People who follow you just ‘cos you followed them typically have no interest in what you have to offer - and if you’re just following people to gain followers you immediately dilute the potential for business intelligence.
Do this instead
1/ Ramp up the value of your networks by culling the number of people you follow. Take your time - you can’t just unfollow everybody at once but you can use tools like followerwonk to get rid of a hundred or so a day.
2/ Only follow people who will add value to your life and your business - use replies, comments, re-tweets, favorites, shares to your heart’s content, but make the act of actually following someone a significant and considered act.
Written while listening to: Andy the Barman by music2work2
Image Credit: Don't follow me by Frank Lindecke on Flickr