Twitter Maintenance; how to tune up your account

I was again thinking of those newer to Twitter, and those who might not have learned how to better manage their Twitter accounts and wanted to share some tips that so many take for granted.

Know your numbers, and how they affect you. Looking at an accounts profile page you will see; Following, Followers, Listed & Tweets. These four numbers can give you a lot of insight about an account, keep in mind what they might say about you. If the account is following a larger percentage then those following it, the account is either newer or the person just keeps adding people without making any connection to those people they added. While this ratio is not a kiss of death, it does make people wonder why so few are following you.

You can use a tool like Twitter Karma which shows you who you follow that is not following you back and visa-versa. My recommendation is that you take the people who don’t follow you and place them on a list, this will allow you to continue to follow them without actually following them. One such list I set up for myself is Study of Social Media , this list allows me to follow people I feel I might benefit from listening to, who chose not to follow me back as well as those I follow who follow me back.

Usually, these people who do not follow you back will show a large number for Followers but a small number for those they follow. I translate this as someone who has a lot of self-worth, but sees little value in connecting with others (entertainers usually fall in this category), list them if you wish to listen to them, but I see no reason to follow someone who is not willing to meet you half way. This is where “Listed” can come in handy, click on it and see what kind of lists others have put this person on. If they appear on some good lists, list them, if not, move on. Ultimately a good balance should be struck between those you follow and those following you. Lastly look at the number of tweets on the account, if someone is following a bunch of people and have very few following them with a large volume of tweets, chances are they are just tweeting promotional stuff.

Another great tool that I love is Twit Cleaner which not only breaks down your list but also analyzes their behavior on twitter using the numbers…

as well as how you look to others.

With any tool, you need to know that the possibility of errors exists, I have not caught one yet, but they do help you in trim the fat from your account and warrant a try. My recommendation is pick one day a week, for me it is ThinDownThursday #TdT. I dedicate time to go through and fine tune my following list.

I don’t think it is bad if you follow a lot of people and have a lot follow you, as long as you are looking to see what you can share with others and what they can share with you. I follow people by assigning them into a list that makes sense to me, and I use an app like Tweetdeck, Seesmic or Hootsuite to monitor my lists.  Here is how my Tweetdeck looks, notice how I have a list to make it easy for me to look at different conversations that I wish to follow.