Why I Unfollowed 99% of My Twitter Followers

True Engagement vs. Phantom Followers

I celebrated my birthday last week by unfollowing 99 percent of my Twitter followers.

But while it was, in fact, on the day, my mass unfollowing, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with it being my birthday. Rather, my firing all but 156 of my 10K+ Twitter followers had everything to do with a long-considered decision to take back my Twitter home feed such that it’s chockablock with inspiration and information from those whose tweets I truly want to see.

Of those 156 folk, I only recently followed roughly half of these, after considering whose tweets, within the whole of the Twittersphere, I wanted to follow. As an entrepreneur and strategist myself, the vast majority of these folk are known for their business acumen and for generously sharing their thoughts, strategic advice, article and book recommendations, and whatnot.

In other words, folk who are likely to inspire my own goings-on, help me to keep abreast of my profession, and whose tweets I’m happy to share with my followers and to otherwise engage with.

This group of folk is likely to grow to some extent as I continue to learn of others whose tweets I’d like to see in my home feed. But, too, I’ll occasionally prune those whose tweets I find are no longer relevant or that simply no longer suit.

The other half of those I’m following is composed of individuals with whom I’ve shared thoughts via Twitter, who likewise inspire me, or who have engaged with my own tweets.

Never one to shy away from swimming against the tide, I’d decided at the beginning of 2011 to delete my original Twitter account, along with my Facebook profile, into both of which I’d invested quite a lot of time, energy and creativity. But five months later I realized that I missed aspects of Twitter that I’d previously found helpful, and so I opened a new account that May — fortunately @SeanMMadden was still available — with goose eggs across the board (0 Tweets, 0 Following, 0 Followers). Nearly four years on from deleting my Facebook account, I’ve yet to reestablish a profile, though do make use of two Facebook pages for business purposes.

Since opening my new Twitter account in May 2011, my Twitter followers had grown to exactly 10,300 before I decided, last week, to unfollow virtually all those I’d previously followed back.

I knew the moment I began unfollowing folk that a fair number of them would unfollow me straight away. I don’t blame them, as in the vast majority of cases I’d do exactly the same. The exceptions would be those whose tweets I truly wanted to see irrespective of whether they followed me, just as I’m happy to follow various thought leaders and other interesting folk who might well never follow me back.

In short, it’s that quid pro quo phenomenon that I’m pulling the plug on.

At the time of writing, 17.8 percent of my previous followers have unfollowed me. I’d estimated that I’d likely lose about 20 percent of folk during the first week, so this is on track. That said, I’m certain that percentage will continue to climb, if at a slower rate — apart, perhaps, from those who might learn, by way of this article, that I’ve unfollowed them!

But the big hit has already taken place. And that’s because a good number of Twitter users tap into apps that alert them when they’ve lost a follower and likewise identify who that dastardly person is. And, not surprisingly, they make sharp use of these apps to then go and unfollow such scoundrels as I. Until now that was my modus operandi as well, except for those outlier cases mentioned above. No longer having to manage this process, or even to follow folk back generally, is another indirect benefit of only following those individuals whose tweets I truly value.

In addition to helping me further hone in on what’s important to me, this amounts to another time-saving initiative fresh on the heels of my having unsubscribed a couple of months ago from virtually every email list I’d ever subscribed to.

Still, why would I want to lose within a week nearly 20 percent of those followers whom I’ve worked hard to attract over the past few years, and to risk losing even more as time goes on?

The simple yet wholehearted answer is that I wanted to regain an authentic Twitter experience, to use it to connect up with folk whom I really want to connect up with, as was easier in the early days.

Just before going on my Twitter unfollowing spree last week, I was following 10K+ folk. That rendered my Twitter home feed useless. Worse than useless — it ran like a ticker tape of tweets that I, by and large, cared nothing about. I’d simply followed (most, but not all) folk who had followed me. Seemed the courteous thing to do. And, wishful thinking, I figured why not have all these folk following me — perhaps at some point they’d become bona fide members of the tribe.

But tribes don’t grow on trees. And while some might argue that a larger funnel is always better than a smaller one, I’d disagree. As I’ve written elsewhere:

Follower numbers, however, mean nothing without engagement, and engagement means nothing unless it’s authentic. [Tweet that]

At best, the pursuit of ever greater numbers of Twitter followers is a meaningless experience — no, not even that, nothing more than a meaningless number.

At worst, it amounts to soul-sapping inauthenticity.

Ultimately, this is why I decided to unfollow 99 percent of my followers, when, instead, I could have viewed only the tweets from folk I’d, in fact, already compiled within a private Twitter list. In the end, I decided I’d rather have my Twitter home feed be the feed I follow, and to be quite ruthless when it comes to keeping this feed well-pruned as time goes on.

And it’s been a delight to once again see the tweets of old Twitter friends and such whose tweets were previously lost in the onslaught of 140-character missives I mostly cared nothing about but which long ago had swamped my home feed:

@Lesism P.S. I'm seeing your tweets again after all this time as I've unfollowed 99 percent of my followers. Writing an article about it.

— Sean M. Madden (@SeanMMadden) November 26, 2014

Les, who has a huge and highly engaged Twitter following, asked the natural follow-on question:

@SeanMMadden Ah, thank you for keeping me! Did you lose many followers when you did that?

— Les Floyd (@Lesism) November 26, 2014

And my response:

@Lesism Great question! I'll send you the article when it's published — tomorrow or Friday at the latest. And you're most welcome, Les.

— Sean M. Madden (@SeanMMadden) November 26, 2014

I want to acknowledge that I, too, fire off a good number of 140-character missives, and I know for a fact that these can likewise swamp others’ Twitter home feeds, particularly those who only follow a relative few folk. This, of course, is less apparent for those who follow a lot of people, whereby one person’s tweets take up a far lesser share of the whole. But I not only can but do relate, and so understand when someone, for whatever reason or none whatsoever, decides to opt out of receiving my tweets. This is as it should be.

But I’m also reminded — and this was a big consideration in my deciding to unfollow 99 percent of my followers as a means to strengthen my connections with those who truly inspire me — that behind each and every Twitter account is a real, live human being (bots and trolls excepted!).

When following folk en masse, this obvious truth can all too easily become clouded whereby we begin treating others’ feeds like a digital landfill. And so, as was the case with my unsubscribing from all those aforementioned email lists, I can’t overly emphasize that my decision to unfollow another person’s tweets is not intended as a personal affront, nor a rejection of what they tweet about. Rather, it’s simply about taking back my own home feed, without concern for who’s following me, or not.

There’s no doubt that I could find inspiration, and human connection generally, with virtually every person I ever followed on Twitter. But it’s impossible for me to authentically connect up with more than a relative few folk whose tweets and links I can take the time to follow, read and respond to.

This tension is inherent in tribe building.

On one hand, we know we need to build our tribe as a means to grow our business and profits. Yet to the extent our tribe grows, it might well reach a point whereby we can't respond, well, to each and every tweet, comment or email. We might dismiss this possibility as an enviable problem. But if we don't begin connecting with folk in an authentic way, such a problem, and such a tribe, is unlikely to exist.

It is the nature of tribes that they’re exclusive. Stated from the glass half-empty perspective, not everyone is going to be well served by any given tribe, nor by the tribal chief who gathers folk around him or her. The best we can do is to serve well the inevitably finite (relative) few. And that service must be built upon a foundation of authentic connection that ultimately doesn’t scale to encompass everyone.

All to say that my unfollowing 99 percent of my Twitter followers is, like my unsubscribing from countless email lists, both a personal and professional decision centered around my acknowledging my own finite time and energy as well as my own commitment to connect in meaningful ways with those relative few folk whom I’m capable of truly connecting up with, or am inspired by.

Now over to you. Have you ever considered firing your phantom Twitter followers? Are you more or less likely to do so after having read this article? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and especially your experiences if you’ve done something similar, whether concerning your Twitter followers or those of other social media platforms.

And if you enjoyed reading this post, I’d greatly appreciate your clicking the thumbs-up button, or otherwise sharing it with your tribe. If you’d like help building your tribe — and, thereby, growing your business and profits — shoot us an email at [email protected].

This article first appeared on the CreativeThunder.co blog

Sean M. Madden is Co-Founder & CEO of CreativeThunder.co, working with creative businesses and individuals, worldwide, to build tribes of loyal customers via strategic websites, visual storytelling, and social media. Get CreativeThunder.co posts.