On Facebook people you once knew find you, on Twitter you follow people you’d like to meet.
– Paul ‘enkido’ Böhm (translated)

Why I follow you on Twitter

I find you interesting
You’re an expert in one of my fields of interest
You’re funny
I know you personally
You’re Darth Vader

I mean, who wouldn’t want to follow Darth Vader?

Using Twitter correctly

There is no one way to use Twitter correctly.

Twitter is a new form of communication. As such, it only has a few rules you need to abide by (don’t spam, and don’t impersonate other people, mostly), but apart from that, you can use it any way you want.

There are quite a few guides to Twitter out there that want to tell you how you can use Twitter correctly. None of them, however, establish actual rules that you must follow.

Opt-in, not opt-out

One thing that most people seem to forget is that Twitter is based on opt-in communication. In order to receive someone’s tweets, you need to subscribe to their stream. And doing so is entirely up to you.

You can also unfollow people, if it turns out you don’t like their stream. Don’t complain about that person, just unfollow them.

I like following someone who seems interesting for a day or two, just to see if they’re worth it. If not, I unfollow.

There is also the RSS feed, which allows you to follow someone without them having to know.

Unfollowing is okay

Conversely, this means you can use Twitter the way you want to. If someone doesn’t like that, they are under no obligation to follow you. The ‘unfollow’ button is there for a reason.

Some people post what they’re doing right now. Some post any interesting thoughts they might have. Others mostly engage in conversations.

There are ways to make you more attractive to the random Twitter user. If you fulfill one of the criteria above, I’ll probably follow you. I won’t follow you if you use Twitter as an alternative way to link your blog posts. Other people will follow you, because you link to your blog posts.

In short: Honor the unfollow button.

Twitter is not a popularity contest.

What makes Twitter useful to me is the people I follow, not the people who follow me.

I’m happy if someone decides to follow me. But unless they interact with me in some way, I won’t be very aware of them. That doesn’t mean you have to interact with someone you follow. Sometimes, you just want to read what someone writes.

But if I had no followers, Twitter would still be useful to me. Followers are just a small part of Twitter.