Learning to love Twitter again

Are you on Twitter?

 It’s noisy out there these days, isn’t it?

 Remember back in the day when you engaged with the people you were following? Halcyon days. This was Twitter at its finest, as new communities rapidly evolved with real density of interest resulting in referrals and tangible business opportunities.

 Then suddenly, it is six years on and my Twitter feed has become a cluttered and often angry place. So I have been avoiding it lately in favour of Instragram, where you can enjoy visually pleasing pastel–coloured boards and inspirational quotes.

 But whilst it might be said to be losing some market share, Twitter is still a global phenomenon and valuable platform. It is incredible for campaigning, for connecting and for debating, for finding “your tribe”. There have been some amazing Twitter moments over the years. Who can forget Ed Balls Day (still celebrated many years later) and #Cofefe to name just two? And there is no better place to be this Saturday, the Eurovision Song Contest, than Twitter (apart from maybe in Lisbon itself.)

 But over the years my follower numbers have gone up to 1600 and there is no way to meaningfully engage with 1600 people, so my feed has largely become noise. 

After several days of staring at my contacts of the past six years and trying to work out whether @strangelyyellow was a business contact or someone I had met in a pub once, I felt I should share three top tips to better Twitter hygiene.

1 – take a deep breath and go through every single contact and assess whether their content is in line with what you want to hear about. I don’t like doing this. I think everyone has something valuable to say and have often followed people for a one off comment. But realistically if you do not engage with the people you are following, they are not likely to notice if you stop following them, so review with a critical eye and look to get your following down to a manageable amount. Follower to following ratio is something that is sometimes discussed, the suggestion being that one should maintain have a positive follower to following ratio, but the reality is that is doesn’t matter. This is secondary to having a valuable, highly engaged following.

2 - Lists, lists, lists. Set up lists which reflect all your interests so you can allocate contacts accordingly. You can do this by going to Profile – Settings – List – Create List. You can choose to make either private or public. For your own organisational purposes, I would choose the former. Mine lists were social media and marketing (obviously), legal, politics, equality and diversity, inclusion, community and personal friends and contacts. The key really is to setting up the lists in advance and then allocating key contacts to the lists as you follow them, rather than the retrospective version, which I found myself faced with.

Once you have your lists in place, use them strategically. One referendum, two GEs, one American presidency and a school cuts campaign later, I have a lot of political figures I am following. I learn so much from every single one and value many. But it is all consuming and has drowned out a lot of other voices. So now my lists are all nice and clean and segmented, I can dip into my politics list just once or twice a day rather than sift through the political tweets every time I look at my feed. Which I am pretty sure is better all round for my mental well-being.

 3 – stop auto-following. As an early Twitter adopter, I got into the habit of following someone as soon as they followed me, with the result that I have been following some very strange people (see earlier reference). We are six years on and etiquette has changed. Someone may follow you as they see value in your content, but look at their bio, look at their tweets and feed and make an informed decision before you follow them back. They will not be offended if you don’t return the favour.

 So that’s it. A short piece to say don’t lose faith in Twitter and remember what it is great for. Allocate some time to do a Twitter spring clean and continue using good Twitter practice going forward and you can learn to love it again like you did in the old days. Or even finally take the leap and get involved.

And now back to my slightly reduced 1300 contacts for further essential maintenance.

 If you would like to follow me on Twitter, you can find me on @hburness, and @thisissaltmarsh I can also be found visual storytelling on Instgram under saltmarsh_marketing.

And obviously I am on LinkedIn too.