I love getting the little notice in my inbox that someone new is following me. It’s not because I like the numbers but because I assume that someone has looked at my profile and thought to themselves that they’ll get some interesting or fun updates from me that they’ll ultimately find worth their time. In other words, it’s nice to be found worthy.

And then I see that some of them have followed me out of a purely blatant attempt to get followed back and have me as just another number in their follower count. Thing is- I’m pretty good at figuring out who is genuine and who gets it on Twitter, and unless you’ve put in an honest effort, I’m not following you back. In case you don’t know all the ways to weed out the Tweetjerks, here is my checklist.

• Avatar: If you’re an egg, I won’t follow you. If you’re the suggestive body of a just-legal teen girl, same deal. If your name is Peter and your avatar is a teen girl, I’ll also report you. If your avatar is a stack of Benjamins, I won’t follow you either.
• Bio: If your bio is blank, I won’t even consider following. If your bio is a sales pitch, I won’t consider.  Your bio is not  the place to pitch or sell. It’s the place to tell people who you are and what you’re about. Sure, mention your business, but don’t turn it into an offer. Cheesy.
• Location: I will forgive the occasional geo-location, but I honestly want to see a city name there. USA is not a good location name and makes me back off. No location makes me walk away faster. If your location is Zothan of the 5th Quadrant, you have too many issues to care if I follow you. If you’re a local business that’s nowhere near me, I can’t understand why you would have followed me in the first place. I’m looking at you, Tuscon movie theatre.
• Counts: If you have 5,000 followers and 8 tweets, I know you’re not for real. If you follow 100x the number of people who follow you, I am likely not to get sucked in either. Just because all the numbers are small doesn’t mean I won’t give you a chance, but there’s a certain magic to those numbers being appropriately proportionate that makes me more likely to hit that follow button.
• Background: Mine isn’t perfect, but it isn’t gross, sexist, money or expensive cars. Your background should say something about you. If it’s one of the default options, I will forgive you, but if it’s custom and obnoxious, I’m going to assume you’re obnoxious as well.
• Tweets: If I’ve gotten to the point where I’m reading your tweets, you’ve likely passed the other tests. My last step is to actually read what you’ve tweeted. I’m looking to see if you repeat tweet (a big no-no), if you engage with your followers (a big yes-yes), if your content is interesting, and if it’s at all valuable to me. Only after I determine that there’s something in the most recent 10 that I would have liked to have seen in my twit stream will I add you.

There you have it: my follow-worthy checklist. Did I miss something on yours?

Tags: list, social media, Twitter | Category Media, Web & Tech