Call me obsessive, but I'm always curious when someone unfriends me on Facebook or unfollows me on Twitter. What did I say? "WHY DON'T THEY LIKE ME?!" I scream.
Ok... maybe not quite so dramatic.
Yet every week I get an email from TweepsMap showing who started following me and perhaps more importantly, who stopped. (At least the service is nice about it — the button to view is labeled "Who showed poor judgment?")
So to satisfy my own curiosity, I review the list and find that nine times out of ten, the "unfollowers" typically fell into two categories:
- People / groups who just started following me last week, and
- People / groups who have thousands if not TENS of thousands of followers/followees (usually in near equal amounts)
While I suppose I could think that maybe the cute person with all the friends at the party was briefly checking me out before tossing me to the curb, the truth is that it's more likely the pathetic loser who no one really likes but he's buying everyone drinks anyways.
In essence it boils down to, "I'll follow you with the hopes that you'll follow me back." The bigger the count, the more impressive it looks.
In some cases, following people who you have no prior connection with is a great way to introduce them to a company, brand, product or personality — if there's value associated with the new relationship.
However buying lists of random so-called "quality" followers (many of whom will end up being fake accounts anyways) does you little good in the long run. Your overall percentage of engagement will plummet as only a few out of your total are actually favoriting, retweeting and replying to your posts.
Popularity is great. But rather than be the super attractive person or the incredibly desperate person in the room, I'd prefer to be the smart one whom people actually enjoy conversing with.
-Jeff
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