What to do when you've followed too many people

The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Elliott Kosmicki is the founder of GoodPlum.com, a productivity and personal development blog for home business owners. You can also follow Elliott on Twitter.
It’s an illness. It’s a disease that attacks the brain, affecting the response of your fingers on the keyboard and mouse. “Stop clicking,” you say to yourself as another follow button has turned into a green-checked following icon.
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem: you’re a followholic and you can’t stay away from a Twitter user’s follow button. (Say it out loud: My name is ______, and I’m a followholic.)

You each have your reasons for becoming a followholic. Maybe your parents didn’t pay enough attention to you, so you’re reaching out to strange Tweeple on the Internet. Perhaps it’s genetic… If your father was a followholic, your twice as likely to become one as an adult. The facts* are cruel, but true.
*The facts I speak of are not actual facts, but made up for this article.
I would venture to say that most followholics started with the feeling of need. The need to get more followers, then turn to a reliance on the reciprocal-follow… However, this causes the people on each end of the follow to become followholics for separate reasons: Need and sympathy.
Following because of need
Like MySpace() a few years ago, people have become attached to the number of followers they have. They see someone with 12,000 followers and all of a sudden their 150 followers seems worthless. Their focus changes from networking and learning about their audience to a raw desire to gain as many followers as humanly possible.
In reality, the number of followers you have should simply reflect the quality of what you give. If you’re following 1,000 people, and have somehow got 800 of those people to follow you back, it doesn’t really mean that much. But if 800 people have come across you on their own and started following you, while you’re only following the 80 people you care about – that says something about your value. It says that people follow you because you’re valuable, not because you’ve started following them first.
You don’t NEED to follow every profile you come across – you only need to follow the people who you find interesting and valuable to your everyday life. Follow them if you would talk to them in real life.
Following because of sympathy
“Aw, that’s so sweet… this guy I never heard of who has no description filled out, no website, and only 4 tweets started following me… I’ll follow him back, poor guy!”

Reciprocal-following is, in my opinion, one of the most dangerous time wasters. Whether you follow back manually or through auto-following – if you spend a lot of time with a Twitter app open during the day, you’re clogging your screen and brain with information from people you really don’t care to see. Not only that, but you’re preventing yourself from building a relationship with your followers. How are you supposed to engage 12,000 people adequately? There’s no room for you in conversation if you’ve diluted yourself like that.
There is no need to feel sympathetic to people on Twitter. Follow them back if you find them interesting and valuable to your everyday life. Follow them back if you would talk to them in real life.
There seems to be a pattern emerging…
Have guidelines about who you will follow
I follow people based on the idea that if I had to slide a quarter into their Twitter page in order to activate the Follow button – would I still follow them? If I’m following you, it’s because I would pay for your updates. Either you do something interesting, you seem helpful to others, I know you in some way – or would like to know you.
If you’re following 10,000 people, would you have paid $2,500 for the privilege of having to sort through that many Tweets every day? Somehow I doubt it. I mostly doubt it because it’s impossible to do. There is no way you’re paying attention to the people you care about if you’ve clicked “Follow” on every profile you’ve ever seen on Twitter.
Do you have guidelines for yourself about who you’ll follow? If not, feel free to take mine: You’ll only follow people you’d be willing to pay to follow.
Recovering from followholism:
Admit you have a problem: If you can’t pay attention to the amount of people you’re following in a manner you would want someone to pay attention to you, you’re a followholic. Admit it, realize that it’s killing your productivity and value, then take steps to overcome it.
Clean your contacts: If you’re following only people you’re interested in – you’ll never have to do this step. But if you’re like most people on Twitter – you’ve fallen down a slippery slope and need to recover. Start by getting rid of the riff-raff.
Use Twitter Karma to clean your contact list once. This is a simple tool that shows people you follow, and who follows you back. This is your chance to stop following the people you simply clicked “Follow” to try and get them to follow you back, but they never did.
Manage incoming followers: First, turn off auto-follow in whatever program you’re using to do it. There is no possible way that anyone legitimately wants to follow back everyone who follows them. This isn’t up for discussion.

Once that’s complete, try a tool like Tweepler. Tweepler allows you to see all the people you haven’t sorted through yet. You’ll see their bio, website, and more – all from a single screen. I’d be totally lost without this. The first time you load it up, it may take you a while to sort everyone out, but once you’ve done it – you can probably come back once per week and it’ll be a more manageable list.
Run Twitoria every so often. This site allows you to instantly see anyone you are following who is “inactive.” I run this every month or so – because it’s natural to come upon someone you find interesting, but then that person just never uses Twitter again. Since that’s the case, I choose to unfollow them (and get my money back) – thus keeping my list more manageable.
Remember – you’re only going to follow people who you find interesting and valuable to your everyday life! Follow them if you would talk to them in real life.
Finding people to follow: One of the biggest problems people have at first is finding quality people to follow on Twitter. This leads to following everyone, and eventually to becoming a followholic. This not only makes your time on Twitter less worthwhile, but it can become a productivity nightmare to try and pay attention to all the people you’re following.
My first suggestion is to start with Twitter Search(). This allows you to search everything everyone has ever tweeted. By searching for topics you’re interested in, you’re very likely to come across people who have similar interests as you.

Next, try a service like Mr. Tweet. Simply visit Mr. Tweet’s Twitter page, follow him, and he’ll collect information about you in order to suggest people you might like to follow. Who knows, he might even suggest me!
The last tool I love to use to find people is Grader. Grader is meant to “score” Twitter users based on followers, Tweet rate, etc. But I love using it to find popular Tweeple in my area. First, look yourself up on Grader. Then, find the area where it says your city/state. Click on those to see the top Twitter users in your area.
Finally, followhol free!
Once you’re free of the follow epidemic, you can use Twitter to network, respond to people in a timely manner, become more engaged in conversation, and better learn about the people you’ve chosen to follow. This, after all, is what social media is all about!
I understand that some people who read this will take it personally – it’ll feel like I’m speaking to them, and that I’m saying what they’re doing is wrong. I’m fine if you’re using Twitter to run up a follower number, blast your marketing message to people, or announce 5 times in one day that your followers shouldn’t miss your upcoming conference call. I don’t take that personally. However, when I try to help people on a daily basis figure out the best way to use Twitter in their business, how to find and produce quality and personality on Twitter, don’t take it personally that I won’t be referring them to you.
Elliott Kosmicki is a web developer and marketing specialist for an Internet Retailer Hot 100 company in Madison, WI. When he’s not absorbing marketing strategy and personal development material, you can find him writing for Good Plum – a productivity and personal development blog focused on the thoughts of home business owners, freelancers, and dreamers. You can also find Elliott on his personal summary page, and on Twitter().

cf http://mashable.com/2009/03/10/twitter-followholic/