Every time I tweet, I lose followers!

[deeinkc]

Something bothers me about Twitter that I know I shouldn't worry too much about, but it still bugs me. My follower count has hovered around the same number (give or take 5 to 6 followers) for quite a while now. I feel like every time I gain a few, I lose a few. I even signed up for Qwitter to see who is jumping ship. Some of them I can understand why, since I changed my focus this year. But I can't seem to gain any new ground with Twitter.

Do others experience losing Twitter followers a lot? I feel like every time I send a tweet, I lose one or two followers. So I am a little gun shy about tweeting cause I'll end up losing followers! I don't want my experience to be all about the followers, but I do want to feel that I'm connecting with people and gaining new contacts. Any suggestions?

Thanks all!

[lee810]

I am not a Twitter expert, but I can tell you what causes me to unfollow someone. It's when they tweet something that either has no value or, worse yet, annoys me. I have unfollowed people because they used twitter to bludgeon followers with a particular political view. That's a quick way to lose half your followers unless you're preaching to a choir who follow you BECAUSE of your political views. I also get annoyed when people post what they had for breakfast, or just to say something like, "WOW, what a GREAT WEATHER we're having where I live!". Sure, that's a nice sentiment to express, but not enough to interrupt me or anyone else.

Then, of course, are the self-serving promotional tweets. That is an art. It's hard to promote yourself or your company without coming off sounding like you're doing it.

The purpose of a tweet is to enlighten, entertain, educate, humor, or in some small way, make the person reading it feel good. At least that's my opinion of how it should be used.

-Lee

[floridaguy]

How often are you tweeting?

I think a problem many people fall into when they start using twitter is that they send out 20 tweets a day and all of them have links back to their site.

Try changing your tweeting frequency and see if that changes anything.

[jeremy]

First of all, the number of twitter is not a very important issue. All we need is active follower, that 5-10% followers make the most sharing, rest of it is more likely to spam or tweet non relate news.

May be you can put a survey to collect user feedback, to understand what is their actual reason to left or joint the page. Beside twitter, is other social media facing the similar issue e.g. FB, linkedin, pinterest?

[miche89]

maybe because some of your tweet are so annoying. be more creative

[lee810]

maybe because some of your tweet are so annoying. be more creative

When I replied earlier to this thread, I didn't mean to insinuate that Deeinkc's tweets were annoying, and I'm hoping she didn't take it that way, since I had never read her tweets (but I would subscribe if I knew her twitter account name, and perhaps be able to provide better feedback). I was just saying that tweets that annoy me are the ones that generally make me unfollow someone.

Twitter has always confounded me. It's like being in a cocktail party where everyone is talking to no one in particular and the only ones that are being listened to are the famous people.

Fame is not a quality that can be reciprocated. The ones who achieve fame through other means, such as sports, TV, music, etc., have many more followers than the amount of people they follow. But those who are not famous and want to gain a lot of followers use something akin to reciprocity, i.e., they follow people in the hope that person will automatically follow them back. But if they don't, they will unfollow them, constantly on the hunt to increase the number of followers. Twitter is aware of this but only puts a stop to it if they detect automated tools are being used. But I don't think those are good followers to have, because they may be trying to do the same thing to get attention. They may be following you, but they aren't listening to you.

In order to capture attention, you have to write something worth reading, or do something worth writing about.

[jeffsmith]

Always try to tweet the useful and informative content and don't use the unnecessarily hash tag.

[lisa]

Great points lee810, There are so many automation tools out there with Twitter. Some scripts are set to unfollow if you don't follow back (as lee referred to) and who knows, Twitter may also be cleaning out "fake" accounts from time to time as well.

You mentioned you changed your focus. That would be a definite reason for people to leave. If you started tweeting about one subject and then all of sudden change tunes, that would make sense.

Another way to maintain a more active following is to engage people. Social media is a two way street. So hopefully you are not only just tweeting out info, but responding to other people you follow and sharing their content as well.

[karmadir]

Keep Posting interesting news and make sure to not to involve in a verbal/racial spat,that can be a big drawback.

[rsnipes]

What types of tweets are you sending out?

[abcpune]

Yes. In twitter, the followers increase with time and you have written that you are loosing followers. So there must be a reason.
I don't know what types of tweets you are tweeting there. But i will say that your tweets should be informative so that people would like to read and follow. Unnecessarily don't use # while tweeting. Try adding some new followings regularly so that you would be able to know the nature of tweets others posting.

Jyoti
ABCPune

[adficientppcmgt]

Maybe because of the content of your tweets,maybe some of your followers don't like it and they just choose to unfollow you. You have to tweet interesting ones.

[ragarwalsscs]

You can schedule messages to be tweeted, auto generate twitter messages, automatically retweet some users tweets, auto reply to specific tweets and a whole lot more. This way your Twitter account remains active all the time and your not wasting much time on Twitter as well..

[deven75]

Anyone don't want to see unwanted, uninterested tweets on there news feed, you can add people easily and make them follower is not a tough task, but you also don't want every time see their unwanted tweets on your wall whenever you tweeted it shows on their twitter home window and they don't want to see your tweets again so they un-follow you. So tweet only interested and informative content.

[Spirit]

I unfollow people when they tweet the same (post) over and over and over again. It is really annoying. Since I don't know what you tweet about, it's sort of a general answer.