Mark Poppen

I’ve been wanting to write a post on this a while, because I think you might want to know why I am or am not following you on Twitter. Here are the 1 do’s and don’ts if you want me to follow you. I sure as hell don’t want to be an arrogant guy, I just don’t think Twitter is a popularity-contest. I see it as a communications-platform, so I don’t use auto-follows, auto-dm or programs to get me more followers.

Let’s start off with why I’m not following you.

1: Bio: None

If you want to connect with me, great! But you need to introduce yourself a little.

2: Marketing, Social media strategist, Guru-marketeer, Successful internet-something

Please, spare me the “I can tell you how to make money online”-bullshit. I’m a designer, I love my job and I don’t want to be in your pyramid-scheme. Keywords in your bio that trigger my non-follow are: marketeer, sales (unless for an actual company), market, money, successful, profit, empower, affiliate, MLM, social media, “guru”, and my personal favorite: “The Google mystery solved.”.

3: Mentioning the same URL tweet after tweet

I know you want to promote something, but you don’t have to be an ass about it. If you’re interesting as a person. It’s very likely it only takes 1 tweet to have me check out your product..

4: 1000:2 Ratio

If your following-count a whole lot higher than your followers-count, there must be something wrong. Either, you blocked all your followers, you’re a spammer or you’re REALLY not interesting..

5: The hot chick profile pic.

Yeah, really? I follow a few designers that are a delight to the eye, but they actually have something to say. A female model called “Eric”.. probably not.

6: Tweets about formula 1

Huh? Yeah. It’s nothing personal, really, but since I’m a HUGE formula 1 fan, I don’t want spoilers in my timeline. Since I’m not able to watch races live, I have to watch the rerun. And it’s a lot less fun when you know who won on forehand.

And these will give you a great chance of me following you.

1: @replies

This, to me, indicates you’re actually interacting with people, which means you’re not a bot. Always a plus.

2: RT’s

Not a necessity, but it’s a bonus. There is a thin line between retweeting every tweet you see and retweeting valuable stuff, though.

3: Designers

I follow most designers that follow me. Who knows, we might work together in the future. I get more and more business through Twitter, so please, do follow.

4: English or Dutch

Tweet in English or Dutch, so I can understand what you’re talking about.

I use Twimailer. This is a service that intercepts the Twitter mail to you about new followers. It re-formats the email, so you can see if a follower is a spammer, right in your email. It shows, information like the bio, website and location, the profile picture and the last Tweets. I found it to be very useful in sifting spam from legit followers.

Of course, you can follow me: @MarkPoppen