We usually cover pharma or healthcare specific topics here, but today I wanted to touch on something more generic, but certainly part of today’s digital marketing mix, Twitter. With more and more pharma companies adopting Twitter as the digital tactic du jour, I thought this post would be fitting and helpful to anyone who has a Twitter account.

I get questions about how to get more followers all the time, but rarely do I ever get asked how do I get less followers? I’m here to tell you today that you probably need less followers. Just to be fair, I’m probably one of the people that needs less followers (@jonmrich). (Not you, of course, I want you as a follower.) I need to get rid of some of the annoying folks that seem to follow me and for some reason, I find myself following back.

You see, at heart, I’m a trusting guy. I believe that people are inherently good. So, from time to time, I’ll take a look at the people following me and I’ll follow a bunch of them back. Nice, right? However, a few of these people who I so blindly trusted can’t resist taking advantage of yet another follower. As much as I hate all the things that get me to unfollow people, I love actually unfollowing them. And for all of Tweetdeck’s faults, it sure is easy to unfollow, block, and even report spammers with one click. So, I do…a lot.

I thought it might be helpful for everyone out there if I shared the ten things are guaranteed to get me to unfollow you. I share this with you for a few reasons. First, don’t do this stuff. If you really want to use Twitter the right way and not take advantage of your fellow man, don’t do these things.  Second, unfollowing is critical to the future of Twitter. Seriously. Spam is killing Twitter. I’ve written about this before and even those people who said I was crazy a month and a half ago now tell me I’m right (read: Diagnosis In: Twitter’s Dying a Slow Death). So, unfollow all the spammers and hopefully they’ll give up. And finally, if you’re managing a corporate account and are following a bunch of folks back, you can probably do without having a bunch of spammers as part of your followers. Doesn’t look make you look really good.

One caveat…not all of the things below are indicative of spam. Some, like many other things, are just plain annoying to me. It’s up to you if you want to unfollow the folks doing these annoying things, but I do ask that you unfollow, block, and/or report spammers (here’s how).

Note that in all images, the links, user names, and profile images have been blurred to protect the guilty, er, innocent. So, onto the list (in no particular order beyond the order I thought of them).:

10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get Me to Unfollow You on Twitter

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1. Mention MLM (multi-level marketing) in any form.

This means ever including the words “make $XXX” where $XXX represents some ridiculous number like $437.81. Also, mentioning your “system” that you use to make money from the Internet or implying that I’m a fool for not doing the same, is a guaranteed unfollow. Thanks, I’ll stay poor.

2. Hashtag me to death.

It’s amazing how this seemingly simple symbol, #, can mean so much. If you want the full scoop on Twitter hashtags, then check this out. For those not familiar, you’ve probably seen words preceded by the hash symbol and wondered what it was about. Here’s what they are: “Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. Hashtags were developed as a means to create ”groupings” on Twitter, without having to change the basic service.” Got it? Hashtags are not something for you to put into every other word in every tweet. I don’t understand why so many people insist on tagging common words with a hashtag or filling an entire tweet with hashtags. When they were created, the hashtags.org people came up with these reasons for using hashtags:

# Events or conferences, e.g.: “Tara’s presentation on communities was great! #barcampblock”

# Disasters: “#sandiegofire A shelter has opened up downtown for fire refugees.”

# Memes: “My #themeword for 2008 is conduct.”

# Context: “I can’t believe anyone would design software like this! #microsoftoffice”

# Recall: “Buy some toilet paper. #todo”

# Quote: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt #quote

Nowhere in here does it mention “a word I like” or a “word that I think is important.” Perhaps I dislike hashtags so much because they are one of the latest forms of Twitter spam. Do you want people to notice your spam tweet (spweet?)? No problem. Just attach the tag of a trending topic to your tweet and thousands will see it. It doesn’t matter if you’re Joe’s Pizza Shack. You can still attach #iranelection to your tweet about your new deep dish pizza. No one will mind.

Except me.

3. Tweet about news I can get anywhere else.

It’s perfectly fine to tweet about something in the news or a major story. It’s not fine when you’re basically tweeting the entire list of top stories from Reuters…all the time. That’s why there’s Reuters. If I wanted a feed of the news, I’d read a feed of the news. I know where to find it. Of course, this is mostly spammers looking for more followers who find them when they search for certain keywords. A big thanks to Twitterfeed for enabling this. You’re on my list.

4. Making it ALL about you.

It’s fine to tweet about your own stuff. A new blog post, maybe a friend’s company, or the new website you just created. Great. Let’s hear about them. But not only about that and not over and over and over again. You’ve got to mix in some things in which you don’t have a vested interest every once and a while. So, brag about that blog post you worked so hard on (I do), but don’t tweet it 25 times a day for a week.

5. Tell me how I can get more followers.

400 per day seems like the most popular number mainly because the same handful of “companies” are behind what can best be described as a Twitter pyramid scheme. If Bernie Madoff tweeted, he’d have created one of these services. And, by the way, if you want 400 followers, just follow about 1000 random people. You’ll get about 400 to follow you back. Happy now? PS: if you were lured by their promises of Twitter fame and followers, the only way to ever stop them from tweeting on your behalf is to change your Twitter password.

6. Unfollow me.

Just for clarification, I don’t mind if you unfollow me (especially if you’re a spammer). I do mind if you follow me, wait until I follow you back, and then you unfollow me. That’s a sure sign of a spammer. You see, you’re only allowed to follow a certain number of people a day and there’s a limit on the total number of people you can follow (read all about it here). This number is 2000. You can’t go over this unless you have more than 2000 followers. After you get more than 2000 followers, the number you can follow is a proportion of this amount. So, for someone who wants to maximize their followers, they need to cut back on people following them so they can follow other people, hope they get followed back, and therefore, get even more followers. Sound complicated? It’s not. Spammers figured it out pretty quickly, so you could too if you really wanted.

7. Hit me with your multiple personality disorder.

Please don’t send the same tweet out from more than one account. You can have all the accounts you want in the world, but don’t tweet the exact same thing from every one of them. I’ll let you get away with having two accounts tweeting the same thing from time to time. Maybe a personal account and your company’s account. I can live with that. When you get up to 3, 4, or 5 of the same account with each sending out the same tweet…well, you’re killing me. Though it does make it easy for me to unfollow a bunch of people at once.

8. Steal my tweet.

I get my blog content “syndicated” all the time without my permission. Some blogs take big excerpts of my stories and post them as if they are their own. We all know this isn’t right. Of course we do. And yet, people steal tweets all the time. Sometimes they aren’t copied word for word, but usually they are. In general, I think these are well-intentioned folks who aren’t clear on Twitter etiquette. If you want to share my tweet, then re-tweet it. Good, you know that. If you try to re-tweet it and it exceeds 140 characters, the solution is not to cut out my name from the tweet. Try to shorten elsewhere (Tweetdeck will do this automatically for you).

9. Use fake URLs.

This seems to have become more popular lately. Here’s how it works: the spammer (it’s always a spammer) sends out  tweet with something interesting that compels me to click on it. Chances are that they probably stole the tweet content from someone else and then they attached their own shortened URL to it. When you click the URL, you don’t go to the story you thought you’d see, but instead, you’re forwarded to their affiliate account for the latest MLM scheme they’ve been sucked into. It’s a bait and switch Twitter-style.

10. Auto-DM me.

Please don’t. I really hate these things. If you want to really take a moment and write me an actual, personalized DM when I follow you, great. I’d love to hear from you. If, however, you send me an automated DM when I follow you, 99% of the time I’ll unfollow you. These auto-DMs, in some cases, I’m sure are well-intentioned. But, they are mostly spam. Some of these are so bad, that I can’t help but share them with the world. I aspire to collect them all someday and let others share theirs as well. I think it would be fun…sort of.  Here are a few of my favorites (these are all actual auto-DMs I received in the past 2 weeks (with names and links redacted) plus why I found each so annoying:

• “Great to meet you. Look forward to reading your Tweets!” Or something like this. You didn’t meet me and if you’re so looking forward to it, why don’t you read them then?
• “Thanks for following! If I can help you with publishing (including political campaigns) or homeschooling ?s, DM me” Wow, what are the odds? I do happen to have questions about homeschooling that I couldn’t figure out and I didn’t know how to publish something for my upcoming run for mayor. Seriously people?
• “If you are on Facebook, you might also like my page [link redacted].” Yes, creepy auto-DMer, I want you checking out pictures of my family.
• “Appreciate the follow. Look forward to your twisdom : ) ” Oh, good, a pun using “Twitter.” How clever.
• “Thanks for the follow Jonathan. I’m hoping it was inspired by my recent fitness article on my blog?” Ah, yes…your fitness article. Sure, sure.
• “I just gave you “High Five”! Check it out: [link redacted] You should send me a gift back ; )” I should do more than send you a gift back. This Twitter plague was probably foisted upon us by the same people who created those “smiley” malware browser plugins about 10 years ago.
• “Thanks for the follow or follow back.” Nothing like a personal touch.
• “[name redacted] uses TrueTwit validation service. Please follow this link to validate your profile. [link redacted] Thanks” Yes, I’ll do that because I’ve got nothing else to do.

So, now you know how to avoid having me unfollow you. You also should have a pretty good idea of how to cleanse your Twitter stream of spam. It makes the Twitter world a better place.

In an effort to encourage more people to unfollow spammers, I’d like to propose something new. You all have heard of FollowFriday on Twitter (#followfriday). People use this tag on Friday to recommend to their followers other people they should be following. How about doing this the other way around with an unfollow day? This could even be an unfollow/block/report spam day if we want to get really ambitious. Here’s how I propose it works: find a bunch of people who have spammed you. Don’t include people who say things you don’t agree with. Only include people who are really spamming the system. Take your list of names and create a tweet and add on the following tag: #tidytues. Get it? Tidy plus Tuesday.

Maybe it’ll make a dent.

QUICK UPDATE (Sept. 11, 2009): It turns out that my attempt at a creative title for this post wasn’t that creative after all. Back in July, Irene Koehler from Almost Savvy wrote a post called (get this…) 11 Sure-Fire Ways to Get Me to Unfollow You on Twitter. I know, sounds familiar, right? Of course, my post shares an almost identical title (I went with 10 ways instead of 11). I thought I was in the clear using “sure-fire” to describe anything, but Irene beat me to it. I guess I should have done a little Googling first. So, while I had no idea that Irene’s post existed when I wrote mine, I thought it would still be appropriate to give her credit here. Check out her post and the rest of her blog. Some really great stuff. To Irene, sorry for inadvertently “borrowing” your title…obviously I think it’s pretty great.

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3. Diagnosis In: Twitter’s Dying a Slow Death