I have been following some folks on Twitter who are up and coming actors, and I have seen them handle followers one of two ways. Either they follow the people that follow them, or they have like a thousand followers and only follow like 40. To me I think that having someone follow you and listen to what you have to say deserve to be followed back, provided they are not sales or porn bots. I think I owe it to the people that follow me to show them the courtesy to follow them back. Granted I only have about one hundred and fifty followers, but I feel like I own them something. I am not sure if the people who only follow like 40 people out of thousands are using it as some kind of a power play. Oh look you are special enough for me to follow you. I guess I am a contradiction because I also do not like people that beg you to follow them. I had the experience of a supposed up and comer asking me why I unfollowed them, when they were not even following me back. What the heck? Do they have a tracker that tracks people that unfollow them so they can stalk them? Get real, you are not that big.
Another thing that I like to do is try to respond to peoples Tweets. Again I think it is only polite, if you are going to follow someone, you would hopefully find something they say that would be interesting enough to respond to. I guess that is another contradiction that I have. It is sometimes hard for me to keep up with folks, especially on Fridays with all of the FF’s. So I can imagine it would be hard if I had a ton of people that I follow. I guess that is how I end up being a speed bump in people’s timelines because they do follow a lot of people and don’t see half of the Tweets. I am not sure what a happy medium would be. I just know that participation drives Twitter, and is what makes me want to come back to it. It has afforded me the opportunity to communicate with people that I would never have been able to communicate with otherwise, and meet a ton of cool people. It also got me a semi-paid writing gig. So even though I have been on Twitter for quite a while now, I am still trying to figure it out. Rule number one never take it too seriously. Rule number two, when you send a response to an actor, musician, writer, or other people don’t expect anything back. It makes it all the more special when you do receive a response.
I am appreciative of all of my followers. Wish I had something cool to offer like some of the cool artists, writers, and actors on my list, but unfortunately all you get is me. I guess I will have to make it worth your while.
