I think Twitter is a useful tool. It forces me to express a thought in 140 characters or less.
For a while all of my tweets made it over to FaceBook, but now it’s 
set up that only those I want to move over, actually do – automatically. You’ll also find that my tweets during the week are all summed up on this blog. So, if you only check here you’re sure to keep up with me. 🙂
I’ve been using Twitter for nearly 10 months now. When I started out I only followed the tweets of those people who I knew quite well. Strangely I discovered that other people followed my messages. Eventually I figured out that many of them did so in the hopes that I would follow them back.
Well, their tactic worked. I started following those who followed me, and Twitter became a lot more interesting. In fact, my philosophy now is that LinkedIn is great for business contacts, FaceBook is great for people you know (whether close or not), and Twitter is for everyone.
Through Twitter I have been able to make contact with people I would have otherwise never met. It’s not a deep relationship by any means, but there’s something fun about getting a glimpse into the distilled fragments of someone else’s experience.
Anyway, this brings me to the point of this post. If you follow me on Twitter will I follow you back? Certainly odds are in your favor. I follow many more than I don’t follow. But I do have some standards that I have started to develop…
If you’re reading my blog, odds are pretty good that I would follow you on Twitter. If you’re here you’re probably a real person with a real life and you’d make real posts on Twitter. Ultimately that’s what I’m looking for among Twitter users: real posts. No problem if you want to advertise your business from time to time, or repost news that appeals to you. Those are great things.
But here’s the deal… If every post is basically the same message promoting your business opportunity, forget it. I won’t follow you. If every post is telling me how you can get thousands of twitter followers, I’m gone (especially if your own account disproves it). If nearly every post is “don’t pay for white teeth,” get real. If you have 0 or 1 post and 2000 followers, I wonder what the appeal is, but I won’t add myself to your follower list. I will not follow any of these cases. You simply don’t get the value of Twitter and have never contributed to it.
One more thought… If you followed me, and your photo is not suitable for my kids looking over my shoulder, or your link takes me to some porn site, then not only will I not follow you, I will also block you from following me. There, you’ve been warned.