My Twitter Follow Policy

(Updated September 7, 2009)
Note: To see all my tips on how writers can get the most out of Twitter, please visit my Writer’s Guide To Twitter page.

Thanks so much for your interest in connecting with me via my Twitter account, @inkyelbows. Please note that I don’t auto-follow, so please only follow me if you find my posts interesting, and not just because you want another follower.

I will likely follow you back if:

You’re someone I would like to get to know better because of your job, intriguing bio, interesting tweets, your Web site, or devastating wit.

You’re an aspiring or published writer who often posts about writing, especially if you write for young people.

You’re an editor who often posts about editing, especially if you edit books for young people.

You post about e-books, digital publishing initiatives, or the future of publishing.

You post book reviews and we share reading interests.

You’re an author I worship.

You regularly post news about the publishing industry.

Your profile shows your real name, a photo, location and a bio so I have a sense of who you are.

You help other writers on Twitter, passing on interesting info and links, encouraging new writers.

I will likely NOT follow you back if:

You don’t have any posts yet and most of your followers appear to be spammers.

Your profile is blank so I’m not sure who you are and most of your followers appear to be spammers.

Your userpic is blank so I’m not sure who you are and most of your followers appear to be spammers.

You follow a huge number of people and most of your followers appear to be spammers.

You rarely post about writing or publishing.

You never interact with the Twitter community and only post about yourself, your book, your blog or your service.

You talk about yourself in third person.

Many of your posts are automated posts from other social networking services, quizzes, or marketing services.

You mainly tweet in another language.

Most of your posts are fragments of conversations with other people without context (e.g. “I agree!” “LOL!” etc.).

You seem overly conscious of how many followers you have. (“C’mon, everyone! I only need 3 more to get to 1000 followers!”)

You’re a bot.

You promise to show me how to get thousands of new followers, make tons of money, find God, whiten my teeth, or make my book into a bestseller.

You were following me. What made you decide to unfollow me?

Probably one of the following reasons:

Because you responded to my follow with an auto-DM.

You sent me a DM invite to participate in a game or meme.

You aren’t following me back. On its own, this isn’t enough to make me unfollow you. I follow quite a few people who don’t follow me back because I’m intrigued by their profiles or their writing style or their posts. But if you don’t fall into any of those categories AND you’re not interested in interacting with me on Twitter, I’d rather follow someone else.

Sometimes I see people posting, “So-and-so has thousands of followers. Why would they bother unfollowing me?” I can’t speak for others, but I do a regular culling of my follow list every week. Why?

– Because you may be changing the focus of your Twitter feed away from writing, editing or publishing.

– Because you haven’t tweeted in a while. I may re-follow you again if you resume tweeting.

– To keep control over my follow numbers. Because I follow new people when I discover someone interesting in a chat or through someone else’s feed, my follow list numbers build up and unless I constantly cull, I’ll end up following far more people than the number of people who follow me. This is bad for several reasons, including being mistaken for a spammer.

Other comments:

There are always exceptions, of course.

This page was inspired by Twitter policies of @RayBeckerman (policy) and @dianelevin (policy).