While “big” bloggers teach you how to get more Twitter followers I will try to share a tip or two on how not to lose Twitter followers you already got.
For the last month or so, I have been using Twitter a lot. What ever I do on the computer, I always have TweetDeck running. That means that I am on Twitter more than 12 hours a day.
TweetDeck is a really cool tool that helps you manage your social media accounts. At TweetDeck.com they say “TweetDeck is your personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more.”
I don’t tweet all day long but I do pay attention to what people do and say. And here is where I cut to the chase…
How not to lose Twitter followers
This is what I have noticed and learned after a month on Twitter. This is the sure way for me not to follow you back. This is a sure way for me to unfollow you.
Try not to do the following or be one of these people:
1. The most important thing is to have a photo on your Twitter profile.
Try to make it a photo of you. Or your pet. Or at least your website logo. If you are a hot chick in a bikini and your user name is “marketing company blah blah” – I will not follow you.
2. The second most important – if you don’t have a bio, I probably won’t follow.
Unless you are Lady Gaga, I probably don’t know anything about you. So, let me see who you are. Let me see why would I follow you. Do we have anything in common? Just make me interested.
This is one of my favorite Twitter bios. If that doesn’t make you follow her, what will 
An Example of a Great Bio
3. I don’t like illiterate people. Educate yourself.
OK, so my English is not great but it isn’t my native language anyway. At least I know that a name starts with a capital letter.
Who can take you seriously when you write your own name like this (a real bio! I put question marks to delete the actual name): “Hi, I am ch???? sh????????? from new delhi. Now i am working in tan????? company as a SEO”.
Wow, I hope you have a personal assistant to answer your mail. Bottom line, he is either illiterate or doesn’t care (which is worse).
4. While at bios…Your bio says “I help people get more Twitter followers” and you have 500 followers. Not much for “an expert”.
Here is a tip for you. Help yourself! I am sure not going to follow you. Not to mention that I want followers the natural way.
5. Talking about natural…You are new to Twitter and you are using a bunch of automated tools. You think we can’t see that? I am not following. If I see your automated message in my inbox I will unfollow.
6. If you are using Twiends or similar tools, JUST to make you look important, I will not follow.
If your follow count says Following 80 and Followers 1500 I will make sure I check your tweets or blog. If you are that good – hat down, I will follow and learn from you.
There are many examples of people that have large number of followers and follow a handful of people while actually earning every follower they have. Here is my all time favorite with those numbers. If you can learn from someone, it is her. Thanks, Lisa
Lisa can teach you a lot!
7. Talk about numbers. My next pet peeve. Just take a look of the image below. That does not look normal to me!
You have 2 tweets and more than 60.000 followers. I am not following you, it is obvious you are not saying anything. I am just wondering, why are those 60.000+ people following you?
Even if it was Beyonce, I would not follow a user like this.
8. One big one. All I see when I come to your wall are links – I won’t be following you for sure.
9. You are tweeting in a language I don’t understand, I won’t follow you.
I am not limiting myself to English because I speak several languages but I am not interested in tweets in Chinese. Sorry.
10. And the last one for today…I don’t want too many people hating me after this 
If you end almost ALL of your tweets with “(plz RT/Digg/share)”, you annoy me. If you think those few words you put in every tweet are gonna make me RT, think twice.
This ends my list…for now. I really got to like Twitter in the last month but the more I like some people, the more I see the mistakes of others. I make some too and I can’t say I have a lot of followers but at least they can be sure I will reply to them and not blast them with sale pitches.
Are you thinking of following me?! Oh, thank you – this is me @BrankicaU. If you did not find yourself on the Top 10 list up there, I might even follow you back
Your turn now! Add some more pet peeves to the list. Tell me the best way to lose Twitter followers.
Thanks for featuring me! I laughed out loud at #3 and #4. Wow! I’m speechless at that bio.
Interesting that you mentioned my follow/follower ratio. I’ve actually gotten “hate tweets” from people for that big ratio. People are mad because I won’t follow them back. It’s nothing personal, if they aren’t tweeting about things I want to hear about, no point in clogging my Twitter stream.
I’ve never understood the philosophy of automatically following everyone who follows you. I don’t get upset when people I follow don’t follow me back. Obviously they have their reasons and that’s cool. I think you should be selective about who you follow.
Great article.
Hey, Lisa, thanks for commenting, means a lot to me
#3 and #4 made me laugh too when I first saw them, but sometimes I don’t know if I should cry or laugh at those people, ha ha.
The hate mail and comments on Twitter you get about your ratio is one of the reasons why I pointed it out (I noticed some of the @replies you get).
YOU choose who to follow and people seem to forget that.
I tried following back most people and I realized: they tweet about things I have no interest in, they tweet too much so I miss important tweets from important people, they tweet links only.
So it didn’t take me long to fully understand why your ratio is like that. It takes a lot of effort to really follow 50 people, not to mention 500 or 5.000.
Woah! You totally just got a comment from Lisa Irby.
I was gonna post a large comment about how not to lose your followers on twitter. But then I stumbled upon her face in the comments. Damn…
/Nab.
Yup, totally got a comment from her. Imagine my surprise first time I saw it
She is great.
But so are all of you as well, so next time don’t let a familiar face stop you from commenting away!
I totally agree. I have trouble keeping up with the 80+ people I follow! lol
But on the flip side of that, I have taken some time lately to research and follow some more people. When my follower count started to increase I turned off the “new follower email notification” because it was clogging my inbox. So I got out of the habit of researching more people to follow.
So yes, I will never be one of those who follows everyone who follows me but I had been missing out on a ton of good people out there. So it’s definitely about finding a balance with Twitter.
I totally understand, especially the e-mail part. Forgot to do that!
I use lists to do fast research.
I.e. if someone likes my tweets maybe he/she will appreciate my suggestions. So I have a list called People I love to follow. I add people to it once I am sure I don’t want to miss their tweets. Maybe someone will check out the users on that list because I “guarantee” they are good.
Following this logic (my own) — what I do, see a good named list created by a user I trust and check out the people on it.
Usually, we have same interests so most of the time, people on a list like that, are people I eventually follow.
Brankica! Great post by the way, I really enjoyed reading it in your lighthearted style of writing. I agree with all your points, and have had to find my own balance with twitter. My approach is significantly different then when I started – but like you I manage everything through Tweetdeck or it would be impossible. I follow the majority (NOT ALL) people back, so I use twitter lists to make sure I’m catching tweets from the people that are important to me.
Thanks for stopping by, Daniel.
Like you said, approaches change after a while. I think most people become more “conservative” with their follows.
I also maximize the use of lists via TweetDeck. That is the only way I manage to catch up with tweets from people I love following.
P.S. This is interesting, I guess I was not wrong — both Lisa and you are on my most important list People I just love to follow
I use Tweetdeck too, but I am traveling now with my Macbook and I’m having issues loading it. Ugh!! I sooooo miss it and I’m too lazy to create the groups on my iPhone Tweetdeck app. LOL
And great advice on using the list, Brankica. I need to start paying more attention to people’s lists. Heading over to browse your list now.
Hi, Daniel! You’re actually one of the people who made me realize how many good people I’m missing out on via Twitter with the question you asked awhile ago about why I follow so few people. I appreciated your approach because it wasn’t snarky or mean.
If you start following more than 100 people you will need to get over that laziness, lol.
Some lists are useless as far as I can see but some are great.
I also try to write a nice description for the lists that are important to me. Like the one you and Daniel are on.
I remember that @reply between you and Daniel. It was very interesting. And like you say, he wasn’t snarky or mean. You are also always friendly to everyone and that is one of the biggest qualities I appreciate with people.
One more thing I like about SOME “big bloggers” (including you two, Tristan from Bloggingbookshelf, etc) is that they don’t look down on people.
“If you start following more than 100 people you will need to get over that laziness, lol.”
Ain’t that the truth! OK, OK, I’m getting on it now because I really do miss my nicely organized desktop Tweetdeck.
Thanks so much for the compliment.
OK, off to re-organize my folders. Ugh! LOL
Make sure you share some of you favorite lists with us
Thanks for spending your time with us here, I know how busy you are…
P.S. I am off to do a smart thing for today – add your blog to my favorite link list, can’t believe I haven’t done it by now!
“If you are a hot chick in a bikini and your user name is “marketing company blah blah” – I will not follow you.” Hahaha! That’s so true!
I love your #4 tip, too.
And #7.
And… Well, all of them, really!
GREAT post, Brankica! Keep up the great work!
Hey Tristan, thanks for stopping by
Glad you liked the post.
I just had a few notes I wrote down while using Twitter and thought I would share.
Although the post is about my pet peeves, I thought I could help people who are acting like numbers 1-10 not to lose Twitter followers faster than they got them.
You know what is “the worst thing” about this list? It’s all true. There are so many of those I listed…
Oh My God, the 4th one is hilarious!
Happens in blogs a lot too
Nice to meet you, hope to see you around
Thanks for commenting, Fernando, and welcome.
You are right about the fact that it happens in blogs too. People are promising to help you learn something they obviously don’t know themselves.
It is like people don’t want to realize that it is OK not to know something.
Don’t try to teach people to do something if you can’t do it yourself.
Totally right and there’s also a really bad side about it. There’s people who even charge for doing something they don’t even know how to do it and that is just wrong. Happened to me and hated it.
Oh, that is really bad. I had the luck to run into a genuine person (Lisa) from the beginning. But there are many people that get disappointed because of some money-hungry “guru”.
Very good collections listed out here, i love the 2nd and 4th actually. good job.. go ahead Retweeted
Welcome Praveen, and thanks for the RT. Glad you liked the list.
Thank you for sharing usefull tips so that we can use socialmedia in a right way to improve our blog or websites.
Welcome to Live Your Love and you are welcome
Hi Brankica
You are very “straight to the point” and I appreciate that it can be very good but it has got me in to trouble more than once
I have broken a few of these “rules” but only because I have been extremely busy lately. I have not tweeted much except the “auto” version when I make a new post. I am also against mindless automatic tweets but I occasionally use this method. I try not to make them too mindless and also I tell people I am on autopilot. Then people know when I am actually online because the ‘tone’ of the tweets change.
I find people understand if you tell them why you are doing it. It’s when you try to hide the fact that people start leaving you in droves. Besides all my auto-tweets are out of date so I don’t use them at all right now.
At least doing the things you outline here your guaranteed to attract a qualified following. There is one thing I find amusing on Twitter and that is people running multiple accounts and using pictures they find on flickr as their ID…I love letting them know it too
Great post………..thx
Dennis
Being honest about what you do is the best thing! Sometimes you just can’t be everywhere at the same time but still want to remind people you are out there. Autopilot in this case sounds like a good thing to do.
I am more thinking of people that never try to connect with their followers and just keep broadcasting.
About Flickr photos, yes, that one is cool. They don’t understand that cool photos from Flickr are popular enough to be recongized
Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you here again.
Whoever said a woman can’t teach a bloke a thing or two is crazy. I was only part way through reading you post when I had to go and add something half decent to my bio. It may not be the best but it’s way better it was before I read this.
All good points Brankica and I’m so glad I followed you here from my blog. Don’t you worry now, I’m not a stalker I pretty well follow everyone who comments on my blog
Well thank you so much!
Glad I could help. Bio is one of the first things people see when they are considering to-follow-or-not-to-follow. You can always check out how your favorite Twitter users wrote their bio and go from there.
For example, I didn’t have the SCUBA diver part in my bio and then I saw it in someone’s bio. I really am a SCUBA diver, just forgot to mention it. Then I realized how much time it took me to become one and that it is actually an important part of who I am.
I just thought it might bring me closer to people, writing some personal things about me.
The stalking part…we won’t talk about that…cause I even follow people from their comments on other blogs…
Thanks for commenting and welcome to my blog!
I do have one question for you, and that is why don’t you use your own photo. When reading your bio I assumed you were a bloke because of the photo you were using?
You should never assume stuff like that. The photo I use IS ME!
Damn, I just brought your profile up on my TweetDeck. That sure isn’t the photo I saw. Reckon I must have checked out some other profile. It sure as hell wasn’t that one and there is no way anyone could confuse you with some bloke.
My apologies.
Lol, I wasn’t sure if you are referring to the shooting photo I use on Twitter.
That is me at a competition I won, the photo is important to me and shows exactly who I am.
Misunderstanding, no biggie
Good to know you are using TweetDeck, I think it is great.
Hi Brankica
Love all the points you have made here. I adhere to strict Twitter etiquette and have no hesitation in pressing delete if I consider somone is spamming. Sometimes I find I am following someone cos they are following me; even though I have not given my permission! They get unfollowed quickly, unless they are someone I know and want to follow.
I actually don’t follow anyone who has a huge imbalance of followers to following. My own is not quite right at the moment, although not extreme.
I unfollowed a lot of people a couple of weeks ago. They don’t tweet or interact in any way or tweet their own products continuously and that’s about all. Don’t need that in my Twitter stream.
We all have our own boundaries, and like you, I do read bios, just as I check on sites when a new commenter comes across to my blog. Enjoyed your post Brankica. Thanks for sharing with us.
Patricia Perth Australia
Hello Patricia,
glad to see you here.
I think we have the same “tactics” when it comes to using Twitter and I can see myself unfollowing people almost every day.
As soon as I notice people spamming, only broadcasting or any of the things from the list in the post above, I delete them.
Since I started doing this I notice more good tweets from people worth following.
Hi Brankica!
Your number 3 irritates me too. People might argue that because of the 140 character restriction that they have to abbreviate everything. The truth is, you can write quite a lot in 140 characters. The first sentence of this paragraph is 138 characters.
Another thing that annoys me are those automated “thank you for following me” DM’s you get from some people when you follow them.
Kind regards,
Steve
Welcome to Live Your Love, Steve!
Sometimes I think that people just don’t care.
When it comes to DMs – automated messages, that is one of the reasons I hardly ever check my inbox anymore. I used to send out a personal written message to every new follower. I don’t do it anymore. I learned that many people don’t check their inbox because of those automated messages.
Hey Brankica, I love this info.
I definitely want to be one of those Twitter peeps like Lisa. She has so many followers and she’s not following very many. That sort of Twitter ratio is the best, in my opinion. I’m still struggling to manually unfollow a bunch of accounts I have no interest in, haha.
I’ve never used TweetDeck, but I NEED to check it out. One of my goals in the new year is to embrace social media a lot more!
I agree about Lisa’s ratio. I can see that a person can’t effectively follow more than 100 users (at least I can’t).
I am also trying to unfollow some. I am unfollowing one by one, after checking out their tweets for a few days.
I think you will like TweetDeck. I am using only about 20% of it’s options and it is making my “social media life” so much easier.
Great Post Brankica!
Certainly some food for thought there!
I especially like the stats you provided and real life examples. I had to lol at the ‘chick in a bikini’ how true!
I feel guilty now, because although I do try and provide value with my tweets, I do have an automated response AND I usually follow back. (is this bad?)
My automated response contains no links and just says that I have an impulsive ReTweet urge and I blog about blah blah… feedback on this has been good actually, but now I worry that I am losing potential followers simply because I have it there.
btw: I pay someone to handle my Twitter following. I handle the content, they handle the rest – so not even sure what they do or who they target – but then for $2USD a month I can’t complain LOL
Thanks for a seriously awesome post – and you are right Lisa is the BOMB!
Hey, Alex, thanks for commenting
Nice to see you here. You are one of the peeps I like to follow on Twitter.
You know, this is general post and just some of my observations. I actually never thought of your tweets as annoying and some automation is not bad.
I.e. I believe Daniel uses the plugin that tweets your old posts and that is one way of automation I like, since it gives me the opportunity to learn about old posts I haven’t paid attention to.
I was thinking more of people that are beginners and the only goal is to get 20.000 followers.
Bloggers that have a nice following, like the most of you that commented here, actually need some sort of automation to “be everywhere at the same time”.
I am not saying automatic following is bad itself, I just learned that it is not worth following everyone that follows me.
Especially in case when people follow just to get followback. Most of the time, you will followback and they will unfollow you in matter of days.
Anyway, you are definitely not on my list in this post
Branicka, I saw this post at Blog Engage and I can’t believe I missed it before. This is hilarious and I agree with all your points.
When I get the email from Twitter that says this person is following this or that person that I’m also following, I used to follow back right away. Then one day I noticed that some of my friends kept showing up on the list and it finally hit me – They follow everybody!! So now, I’m at the point that I don’t pay those notes from Twitter any attention and most of the time I don’t follow back new followers. On my main Twitter account, I don’t even get the notifications anymore.
Every now and then, if one of my friends has a post that needs a vote I will include Please Retweet at the end, but not every single day!
I have one thing I wish I could add to your list and that’s the Tweet Old Post plugin. That plugin annoys the heck out of me (cause most of the stories are no longer relevant) but most of my good blogging friends use it so I persevere…
Thanks for the laughs my friend!
Hey, Ileane, so glad to see you here. Your blog is the one I keep reading on regular basis.
Since I wrote this post, I found a few more things that are not cool about Twitter… I might even make a series, lol.
I turned off the e-mail notification a week ago, it was annoying.
Asking people to RT is OK, I am not generally against it, especially if you are asking for your friends’ posts. The thing I had in mind was a user that adds the request to every tweet about her blog posts. That is the part I didn’t like.
) but asking for every post is just too much.
Asking people to RT your own posts is also OK, especially if you are very satisfied with what you’ve done (like we ever are
The plugin you’ve mentioned is something I like at this point but… You are blogging for a long time and you have probably read all those posts when they came out. For me, as a new blogger that did not follow those bloggers at the time, it is a nice way to catch up with their old posts.
I believe it will get on my nerves too, as soon as I read all the posts I need to read.
Thanks for commenting and hope to see you here again.
Great tips Brankica!
I really envy Lisa for having such a following without having to follow back!
I’m currently doing as you suggested, and writing a better bio, hope that could get me more followers
Glad you found my tips useful. I would guess that most Twitter users would agree on them.
Very informative information! I never really looked that much into twitter, but I will be doing some dissecting on how I use it. I really like, the follow/follower ratio comment, and the bio rule as well. It is also crazy how just a picture can do wonders for you. lol. I will have to check back on more info from you.
Bio and a photo can be what will make people follow or not.
So that is the first thing you should do when you start using Twitter.
I like the way you put a personal touch on these Twitter no-no. I am curious about #7 too, it is amazing how someone manage to get 60000+ followers with 2 tweets.
Another pet peeve of mine is when people keep messaging me to check out affiliate products. Obviously they are not interested in having conversations, just making sales.
Oh, Paul, I understand your “pain”, lol.
I stopped checking my inbox because of those affiliate links!
Brankica,
This is hilarious. I love posts about Twitter and all the idiots on there…
I too have many pet peeves about the unauthentic use of Twitter. It’s such an amazingly powerful tool if used correctly.
By the way, I found your site through Nick at SiteSketch101. I see you guys chatting it up all the time so I figured you must have some interesting things to say.
I was right. I like what you have going on here.
See you around..
I am glad you liked it
Yeah, Nick is really great, I love chatting with him on Twitter.
You know, since I posted this one, I think I found more annoying things people do on Twitter, so I might do a sequel, lol. Make sure to come back soon, I would love to connect with more people!
I’m back……….nothing really to add other than I’m deep enough into Twitter that I can pretty much tell the ‘real’ people and who I would like to ‘engage’ with. I’m certainly not twitter elite, but that doesn’t mean I will follow everybody.
I have nothing automated or organized or anything, so it’s still trial and error but an interesting journey.
I do have a pic and bio even if my pic seems a little too formal it is me. Probably more important I’m recognizable as I think it is easier to connect.
I like what I see, I’ll be back……….as Arnold would say……….:)
A shooter, huh; that’s pretty cool.
lol, yeah… I just must add that since this post I have found many more reasons to unfollow people and will have to do a follow up soon
Hi Brankica
I have been commenting on most of your recent posts so I decided to take a look on what you have been up to in the past and find this great post. That Jennie Funkhouser really know how to write a BIO 
I really think that this is 10 great thinks to keep in mind if you want success on twitter.
I have been struggling a bit with your “140 blogs worth hopping” PDF lately, but today I decided to continue where I left. Guess who was the first one under “L”
Have a nice Sunday Brankica
Hey Thomas, thanks so much for digging through older posts
Sorry that file is keeping you so busy, lol, but I think it will help you create your own list that you will visit more often!
Thanks Brankica. Appreciate all your help. I have tried to upload pic and Bio, change and edit my profile on twitter for the past 2 weeks. It keeps coming up “Twitter is over capacity”. Any suggestions ?
Al
I can’t believe it does that all the time. Yes, Twitter gets over capacity a lot but I wouldn’t say that much. Unless you are always on it in the peak time. Did you try doing one edit at the time. Like upload a pic, save it, come back to do the bio, save it….
My website is under construction. Thanks.
In my case, I prefer to be the one following than the one being followed. I rarely have anything to say but am always interested in what everybody has to share.
Thanks again for this Brankica. Great advice. I totally forgot i commented on this post in April. Really appreciate your honesty and the way you write.
Always helping others and offering valuable tips and suggestions. You are right up there with the best. Have a great day !
Is it still Hot as Hell down there ? Marietta has been slightly warm lately. Ha !
Al
I am a Twitter horror story for sure.
I setup my account, but still have not really learned the ins and outs. My goal is to find time to engage more on Twitter. Automated direct message is being turned off. lol. I thought it was this great tool, but I guess people just hate it. I personally like knowing other places I can learn about people and always click the link within an automated direct message provided to someone’s blog, website or facebook page… no sales pages though.. don’t like that. I tend to actually end up engage with those people who leave the auto direct message because they have given me other ways to get to know them. I guess I cant figure out what bugs people so much about the auto-direct message. Still learning.