{"id":418,"date":"2008-03-13T16:47:20","date_gmt":"2008-03-13T20:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=418"},"modified":"2008-03-13T16:50:54","modified_gmt":"2008-03-13T20:50:54","slug":"how-to-handle-your-twitter-followers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2008\/how-to-handle-your-twitter-followers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Handle Your Twitter Followers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"juiz-outdated-message jodpm-top\">Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gapingvoid.com\/Moveable_Type\/archives\/004445.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/0711twitter.jpg\" alt=\"0711twitter.jpg\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/><\/a>A new-to-<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/sarahdopp\">Twitter<\/a> friend just emailed me asking what she should do about the strangers who are suddenly following her tweets.\u00a0 And I don&#8217;t think she&#8217;s the only one who&#8217;s experiencing an influx of spotlight attention because of SXSW.<\/p>\n<p>Like any social networking website, people use twitter for different things, so no one suggestion is going to fit everyone.  Here are my Personal Twitter Policies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If someone follows me, I will click the link to their profile and see if I recognize them.  If I don&#8217;t, I will see what I can learn about them in less than two minutes, silently thank them for caring about what I write, and leave it there.<\/li>\n<li>If I do recognize them, then I check in on the following things:\n<ul>\n<li>Have I met them?<\/li>\n<li>Am I ready to put energy into nurturing a relationship with them?<\/li>\n<li>Do I want to read what they&#8217;re tweeting?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>If they get a &#8220;yes&#8221; on all three of those, then I&#8217;ll follow them.  If not, then I have to stop and think about it a little more.<\/li>\n<li>If I&#8217;m <em>not sure<\/em> if I recognize them and I can&#8217;t figure it out in two minutes, then I usually won&#8217;t follow them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is all a function of how I use my incoming twitter stream: as a feed for ongoing conversation.  There&#8217;s a murky grey area downside in my policy: there are real people who watch my twitters and care about what I have to say, and I&#8217;m not returning the favor.  This makes me wince a lot, but still, for me it&#8217;s more important to protect my relationship feed than to look like everyone&#8217;s best friend.   My policy is less open than some and more open than others.  For the most part, it works for me.<\/p>\n<p>But this does bring up another one of my Twitter Policies&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I use my most recent tweets to update my Facebook status, Skype status, and the &#8220;Last Splash&#8221; which appears at the top of this blog.  Because of this, I try to avoid using the popular &#8220;@&#8221; reply convention unless I can articulate a thought that will stand alone.  Otherwise, I&#8217;m just as annoying to the outside world as someone talking loudly on a cellphone; displaying only half of a conversation is a disservice to eavesdroppers.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of ways to use Twitter, and I know a bunch of people who take completely different (and totally legitimate) angles on the &#8220;follower thing.&#8221;  For example:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll follow anyone who follows me and who is clearly not spamming people.  If they take the time to read my content, the least I can do is show them I care about theirs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Or, &#8220;I&#8217;m not trying to pick up stalkers, so when people I didn&#8217;t know started following me, I switched my tweets to private.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Do what works for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.A new-to-Twitter friend just emailed me asking what she should do about the strangers who are suddenly following her tweets.\u00a0 And I don&#8217;t think she&#8217;s the only one who&#8217;s experiencing an influx of spotlight attention because of SXSW. Like any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,70],"tags":[154,156,155,153],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-social-media","tag-followers","tag-policies","tag-protocol","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}