Many people join Twitter but become inactive soon after because they fail to connect with the audience. Here are the top 15 reasons explaining why someone decides to unfollow you on Twitter.
- Twitter Egg Avatar: It is the default Twitter profile picture or avatar that you should change immediately after creating your account. A genuine photo of you — preferably a head shot — is considered the best Twitter avatar. You should also avoid using GIFs and any inappropriate image. Users do not want to interact or engage with unknown people managing those Twitter accounts.
- No Bio or Description: If you are too lazy to write a bio or description then your profile looks dubious. Twitter asks you to write “About yourself in 160 characters or less.” That gives an idea to users about your interest and the content that you will probably share through your profile. You should also avoid writing your bio in the third person as if someone else has drafted your description. You lose the personal touch and chances to attract more followers.
- Twitter Account Set to Private: Setting your account to private is only recommended if you want to keep the conversation between a limited group of your close friends and relatives. However, if you are a small business owner, blogger or industry expert who wants to reach new people then you should change your privacy settings to ‘”public.” If you are a big name in your field then people may send you a follow request, otherwise users are not willing to make that extra effort and you will end up having low Twitter followers.
- No Tweets: People do not want to follow someone who stays quiet. Even if you have just created your account, you should post a few tweets to make it look legitimate. People tend to follow you depending upon the tweets that you have shared over a period of time. This gives them an understanding of the topics that you are going to share.
- Breaks From Twitter: I personally know a couple of people who use Twitter for getting updated information from various sources but rarely tweet something. In such cases it’s hard to build relationships with your existing followers and new users may not follow if they notice that your last tweet was over a month ago. You need to be more active on Twitter and post something each day. You should share some of the best content that you read on your timeline and add your comments to it. It won’t take more than 5 minutes each day.
- Too Much Tweeting: Seemingly contradictory to the above point, if you are tweeting too much then it may be a turn-off for users. There is no exact number of tweets that you shouldn’t send each day to avoid the “spammer” tag, and it may vary from follower to follower. However, an advisable number of tweets per day is between 6-10, depending on your content and followers. Your tweets should be relevant and targeted towards your audience. You can do some experiments with the content to see what is retweeted or favorited by your followers.
- No Retweets: If I check your timeline and notice that it doesn’t have any retweets, then it gives me the assumption that you don’t like to read others’ content. If you want your content to be shared then you should reciprocate the gesture. Retweeting others’ posts shows that you acknowledge their time, effort and content and you want to connect with them. This will get you regular readers of your tweets and will help you in gaining followers.
- No Conversation or Replies: Communication is a two-way process. If people retweet, favorite or mention you in their tweets, then you should respond to them. You may not be able to interact with everyone but try to thank them as frequently as you can. It is also advisable to start a conversation than to wait for someone. People love to follow interactive users as they expect conversations with them as well.
- Follow Back Promises: Asking people to follow you and promising them a follow back in your bio or tweets is not a good practice. You may get lucky to get some followers but there is a good chance that majority of them are spam. Moreover if you follow everyone just because they follow you then your Twitter stream will not provide you any value and content for your specific interests.
- Disproportionate Following-Follower Ratio: It is expected that you may be following more accounts than the ones following you, but a large difference in these numbers creates suspicion. Trying to increase your followers by following tons of users often raises a red flag that your account is spam. You should maintain a balanced follower-following ratio and should not go berserk on that Follow button.
- Tweeting at Wrong Time: Even if you are doing everything correctly but chose a wrong time to send your tweets, then you may not get desired followers. You need to identify the best time to tweet so that your content appears on the timeline rather than going down the stream when your followers come online.
- Tweets in a Foreign Language: Your tweets can be read globally, however if you tweet in a different language than most of your audience you may not gain sufficient followers. If you are a larger organization and have an international audience then you should create multiple profiles for different languages.
- Sending Spam DM: If you send automatic direct messages as soon as someone follows you then it seems impersonal. Sending DMs to thank your newest follower and inviting them to click on a link is very annoying. Similarly, pushing out marketing and promotional messages to your followers seems spam-y and they will probably unfollow you as well. If you want to thank someone for following you, send an original, genuine tweet.
- Using Auto-Curation Tools: If you are only using Twitter profile to share your blog posts then you need to understand that it is not an RSS feed. Moreover if you have an auto tweet service activated that automatically sends tweet on your behalf, many people aren’t going to follow you. People want to interact with real people rather than reading messages sent by robots or by a third-party curation service. You can start sharing useful articles from other sources, retweet other user’s posts, ask questions and respond to queries to build a strong Twitter following.
- Salesman on Twitter: If you use Twitter to only sell your products then people will not follow you. It is fine to mention your sales role in description but writing a sales pitch is highly unacceptable. If all of your recent tweets are about selling then people will not be interested in following you.
Do you think these are the only reasons for having a low follower count on Twitter? Share your reason for rejecting any Twitter profile.
