Four weeks ago I decided to commit social media suicide by shutting up shop on my old, bloated Twitter account and starting afresh with a new one (I had to juggle a bit to keep the same username). The reason for doing this was to see if I would lose any value by cutting down those that I follow to just those I really care about or interest me in some other way and at the same time as take my following down to nothing. In theory those that really care or are genuinely interested in what I have to say would see what I was up to and follow the new account.

I thought I was already following you

One thing that I find is happening quite a bit recently is that I'll engage with someone I'm following and they will somehow notice that they aren't following me anymore. More often than not, this causes a little confusion. In some cases I'll point them to my original blog post, in others (because it's how I roll) I'll just say nothing and see if they can work it out for themselves. Usually they don't. It appears that several of the people that used to follow my old account didn't see any of the announcements I made about this experiment or any of the blog posts I published via the old account before I killed it off. There are two probable reasons they didn't see any of it:

1. They follow too many people. There is a good chance that if someone following you also follows a lot of other accounts, your tweets will wash away from their timeline in seconds. The more accounts you follow, the less value you get from each one.
2. They don't use Twitter often enough. Not everyone is plugged into Twitter all of the time so if you tweet something while one of your followers is away from Twitter, they are unlikely to see it as their timeline will move on.

Increased engagement

Since taking the plunge, my own engagement has increased. I now miss a lot less due to following less people. Although previously I used to filter my timeline only to show those that I cared about, this added an extra level of inconsistency to the stream and clearly meant I missed a fair bit. Some of those that I followed on the new account said they felt a stronger bond with me because I was following fewer people.

My own influence

You would think that by being followed by less people, in many cases people with less followers themselves would mean that I have less influence. According to various "industry standard" influence measurement tools such as Klout and Twitter Grader this appears to be the case but this is where I can say I have first hand experience that shows the contrary. I get no less clickthroughs on any links I post and I get no less hits on any blog posts I write. I can safely say that my own influence has hardly changed at all. The "industry standard" tools are wrong.

What about the stragglers?

There are still quite a few folks with whom I used to share a mutual following on the old account that haven't followed back on the new account. There are a couple of possible reasons for this:

1. They are completely unaware of my experiment and new account due to one of the two reasons above.
2. They have no interest in what I have to say and haven't bothered to follow.

I'm fine with both to be honest. If it's down to reason 1, they will work it out eventually because I'm probably engaging with them on a regular basis anyway. If it's down to reason 2, I'm happy to no longer be polluting their timeline and lowering the value of their stream.

Final summary

As a reader you will get more value from each person or account you follow if you follow less accounts.

As a publisher you will get more value by building your following slowly and organically with real people. It's worth knowing that people who follow less accounts are more likely to see what you have to say and take notice of it.

If marketing via social media is your thing, perhaps you should think about targeting those with less connections rather than more. You should also be aware that these people prefer to engage rather than be marketed to.

I'm here for the conversation. What are you here for?

Related blog posts

• Social media suicide - and what about influence?
• Social media suicide - @LStacey is dead, long live @LStacey
• Should I commit Social media Suicide?

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Businesses STILL don't seem to get it, do they?  More often than not, the corporate world leave the management of their social media up to the marketing department or simply outsource to to an external marketing agency.  Nothing wrong with this but if a company has a social media presence, they really need to be social.  It's not about broadcast, broadcast, broadcast.  That's just spamming.  There are also many cases where an external agent is used to manage a community for a brand.  Again, nothing wrong with that either but when that brand is a product that requires genuine end user support, it would be nice if the "social" arm of these companies were actually able to do this.