Survey Results: How do you choose new Twitterers to follow?

Early last month, I conducted an informal survey via Twitter to get a better understanding of how people choose new Twitterers to follow. Is there a methodology to finding follow-worthy Tweeps, or is the selection process more random? When we cross paths with someone new on Twitter, what is it that compels us the most to click their “follow” button?

I initially pondered this question with fellow Tweeps like Mack Collier (@MackCollier) and Benjamin Sterling (@bmsterling). Everyone, it seemed, had a slightly different way of judging how they’d follow people so I set out to find out more.

Over 40 Twitter users responded to my survey —thank you! Here are the results:

#1 most popular reason: Content/Nature of Tweets

#2 most popular reason: They Followed Me First

#3 most popular reason: Number of Followers

#4 most popular reason: Ratio of @ Replies vs. Solo Tweets

#5 most popular reason: Other

Survey participants overwhelmingly chose “Content/Nature of Tweets” as the most important factor to consider when choosing new people to follow—88% of respondents ordered this item as first.

In the “Other” category, here’s what respondents said:

From Laurie Sloft (@lauriesloft), who follows people that are already being followed by Twitterers she knows and trusts.

From Donna Fontenot (@DazzlinDonna), who follows people if she likes the website or blog listed in their Twitter profile.

And an anti-follow suggestion from Shaun Duke (@shaunduke), who advises that it’s easy to detect spam bots and thus easy to ignore them on Twitter.

Adding to our survey results, a personal observation about the whole following process: Depending upon how you’re trying to use Twitter to build a follower base, I could see a “strong @ reply strategy” working. By this I mean if you think that following someone is going to get you followed back, but you don’t necessarily want to be bogged down by low-contributing Tweeps, look for those Tweeps whose updates almost exclusively consist of @ replies. Go to your Settings and modify your @ Replies to “Show me @ replies to the people I’m following.” Then, unless the @ reply is directed to you or someone you follow, that person’s post is not going to show up in your Twitter client and essentially is not going to clog up your “Twitter mind share.”

How do you choose new Twitterers to follow? Does your decision-making process match our survey results? Please share in the comments and feel free to tweet me too: @hollisthomases!

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