I joined Twitter way back in October of 2008 as @marcbenton. I’ve always tried to keep my follower/following list manageable. I did recently cross the 1000 mark but that was due to my increased interest in photography. A good guesstimate would be that around 700 of those accounts are photography related in some way. The majority of the remaining are news services, friends, or technology (i.e. Wordpress) related accounts.
Currently I receive around 3 new followers a day. The majority of these accounts are spam or people just wanting to increase their numbers. The checklist below is what I use to vet accounts and determine if I want to follow them. Normally I’ll run this list against their profile page and first two pages of tweets.
If you follow me and expect me to follow back, please try to avoid the following:
1. You list “Social Media Whatever” or some other self-serving tag in your bio. Everyone is a Social Media Expert, Guru, Master or <insert tag here> nowadays. It doesn’t tell me anything about you other than you might be a lemming.
2. In two pages of tweets there is not one retweet. You want your posts retweeted so return the favor.
3. You don’t have a profile picture. Anything is better than nothing, maybe a photo of your new puppy?
4. Your bio is empty. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill it out and let us know something about you.
4. You have like 13,854 followers and following only 100. I make very few exceptions to this rule and normally just for news services like @mashable.
5. SpyMaster or other game posts fill your stream. Just say No to SpyMaster. Try Farmville instead and flood your Facebook friends wall posts. I don’t follow you there either.
6. Your web address in your profile uses a URL shortening service. There’s no limit to that field so why obfuscate it?
7. If you’re selling a service it still might be ok if you try to hold real conversations. If your stream is only filled with links to your site/service…goodbye.
8. All you want to do is tell me how simple it is to make money or get 1000’s of followers with your fool proof plan. Consider me blocked.
9. I follow you then get a DM telling me to visit your website to buy something. No jury in the world would prosecute me for immediately unfollowing you.
10. Posting pornography or links to photos of you in your underwear. I’m married, sorry ladies.
11. Dropping numerous F-bombs or other vulgarities. If this was the case I wouldn’t hold a public conversation with you so I see no need to hold one with you on Twitter. (@shitmydadsays gets a pass on this one)
12. You haven’t posted in <insert your timeframe here>. I use 4 weeks as my rule of thumb but if its one post every month or so I’ll pass.
13. Our interests just don’t mesh. Sometimes it happens, there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Don’t take it personally.
14. You only have one or two tweets in your stream. This one is subjective as people have to start somewhere. The best way to overcome this is by filling out your bio and photo.
15. Your tweets are in a language other than English. I’m happy to see Twitter go global but I just can’t understand what you’re saying. I do have some Spanish and Dutch friends that intersperse English posts with ones in their native language.
This one is a bonus item.
16. You’re stream is filled with nothing but Foursquare or other location service tweets. This is just like SpyMaster to me, I don’t really care where you are at or what you are the mayor of. Having a few now and then is fine but checking in at every corner on your way to work is overkill.
You’d think with a list like this that I don’t follow anyone but that’s hardly the truth. As of this writing I’m following 1,051 accounts and happy with each one of them.
What’s on your list?
Tags:
followers,
following,
networking,
social media,
tweets,
twitter 
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