Leeds SEO

Last week at Northern SEM (which I will review soon I promise) the subject of blocking people on twitter came up, with some expressing confusion that I did this. I’ve been blocking spam twitter users for quite a while now, after seeing @pageoneresults (I haven’t linked him because then he gets spammers following him and I hear he doesn’t like that) doing it, and thinking it was really a great idea. It’s one of those things that once you start you just can’t stop, so for those who are reveling in their high follower counts, here’s 15 reasons why you should purge your followers list;

1.Take the macro view.

I love thinking about my actions on a macro level “what if everyone did what I’m doing now”. It’s a great way to keep myself honest, but sometimes it leads to putting effort into something that may not seem to have any impact. If everyone on twitter started blocking all of their spam followers, the spammers would have no reach, and what’s the point of spamming if you don’t have at least a slim chance of reaching someone gullible enough to buy whatever crap you’re peddling. So for the good of humanity people, you have to block those spammers.

2. This is your group and you are their leader

Our Industrious Leader

Your followers are your group, your team, your, well your followers. That makes you their leader and leaders have responsibility for keeping their group safe. By allowing spam followers in your group, you are showing that you don’t really care who you associate with, as long as they’re shouting your name. Now I don’t know about you, but I would be happy to gather all of my followers in a room together for a chat…I’d rather have just 10 people there, then 10,000 trouble makers

3. You’re putting words in their mouth

Spammers repeat what comes up in their timeline, just by being there you are giving them content to add their spam urls to. Do you really think they are going out there and looking for people, why bother when thousands have given you permission to watch what they say and copy it verbatim.

4. Judge your sphere of influence

When I tweet something, I know just how many people it’s going to reach, I know that my followers are genuinely interested in what I’m saying. Don’t think that just because you have 10,000 followers, that 10,000 people are actually listening, they’re not, many of them are actually looking for a way to exploit what you’re saying (see 3).

5. Pageoneresults does it so it must be cool

Right, that’s right isn’t it? no? oh well, I’m still gonna do it.

6. It feels good

Really good, it’s like spring cleaning out that cupboard that you daren’t open. You might not want to do it to begin with, you will procrastinate over it for months, even years, but when it’s done you know you have got rid of the rubbish and have made room for the things you really want.

7. Bring on the conversation

Twitter is about conversing, not talking. How many spammers have engaged you in conversation? none, oh, so you enjoy talking into dead air then, that’s OK, no really that’s fine, you and your psychiatrist (yeah you know that real person you talk to) can tackle that another day, ‘k.

8. Disalusioned sexy girls

I feel really sorry for all of the lonely sexy girls that follow me, but I don’t want to get their hopes up, when I let them keep following me, I’m leading them on that I might actually give them £5000 to come to the UK and marry me. As much as I would love to, I’m a happily married woman, the kindest thing is not to get their hopes up and block them straight away.

9. They breed like Tribbles

I have noticed that the more spammers I block the fewer try and follow me. This has led me to the inevitable conclusion that once you let them in they start to breed, and you end up over-run by them. I wouldn’t mind but spammers are never as cute as Tribbles.

10. You wouldn’t keep their crap in your inbox

Or add them to your safe senders list, so why keep them on your follow list? We spend so much time clicking block on our email, is it really that  much harder to do it on twitter?

11. You can stop whining

No more follow/no-follow. Think about it, when they follow you the first time, block them, they can’t unfollow you, and they can’t follow you again. Simples!

12. You’re loved, I promise

You don’t need 10,000 followers to affirm that people really love you. It doesn’t make you any cooler, or more popular. Yes I know you really wanted to be part of that cool crowd at school and it gives you a really warm feeling when you look at the cool kids twitter account and they only have 10 followers, and you get that gloaty feeling, but really your friends were better then theirs anyway, and you probably earn more money than they do, and your kids don’t have ASBO’s…do you really need more?

13. Your handing them your other followers

They’re looking at your followers and who you’re following, you’re giving them those peoples names, and doing nothing to stop it. If you really want to annoy everyone you know it’s much easier to just open the next Trojan horse that lands in your inbox, then you can annoy all of your non-tweeting friends too.

14. If only blocking worked everywhere

If I had the power I would block most of these people from the face of the earth, never mind from Twitter. I’m pretty sure most of you would join me in that, but as blocking them from twitter is as close as any of us will ever get, we may as well keep at it don’t you think?

15. It keeps you looking

Every time I go through my follower list to block people, I notice someone real who is following me, often I go and nosey round their tweets, and every now and again it strikes me that there is someone following me that I would really like to follow. That alone makes it worth the effort to keep my followers list tidy.

So next time you see a spammer in your followers list, block them, go one, just one, try it and see how it feels. You can’t get hooked of just one, honest.