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If you do not already know, Qwitter is a service that will notify you when someone has stopped following you on twitter. Another popular service is Twitterless, which does pretty much the same thing as Qwitter.  Some might see this as a beneficial service so they can see who is no longer following them after you tweeted about something. Does it really matter who is longer following you on twitter? Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog had this tweet to me and I agree fully.

When you start caring more about why people are no longer following you on twitter, some will hold back on what they tweet about. They are afraid they might lose more followers and at the same time they have lost the concept of twitter. Twitter is a place for you to express yourself to the world and to the people that follow you. When you start holding back on what you tweet about, you are no longer telling the world what you think. It is an empty shell of you who is tweeting only bits and pieces if your thoughts and opinions. You might as well be tweeting with a sock in your mouth or a self appointed gag order.

The Right Attitude To Have

Some people like the idea of knowing who is no longer following them for whatever the reason may be.  Cyandle of Web Entrapments uses twitterless for this reason.

nahh i can careless about that…i like knowing if they don’t think i’m worth following…if i’m not then they aren’t either…

Currently I do not use either service, if someone stops following me for whatever reason, then so be it.  If you use either service, or plan on using one of them in the future then I would go with twitterless.  Pat Strader (@matterhornpat) informed me that twitterless is in fact faster then qwitter when it comes to sending notifications of people no longer following you on twitter.

Do you currently use either service?  If so, why do you use it? Do you tweet these people back asking why they no longer are following you? In the end just be yourself, do not limit your opinions or comments on twitter in fear of losing any followers.  That is just a number, if care more about that number then anything else, you are using twitter for the wrong reasons. It is about communicating and networking with other people online.  Having 15,000 followers means nothing if you push out crap for tweets, always advertising your Squidoo or Blogger junk.

Twitter has become more popular as a way to not only keep in touch with friends, but also as a way to meet new people that you otherwise would not talk to. Twitter is a combination of a micro blogging platform and instant messenger built into one. In this post I want to show you some examples of how not to use twitter and what the reason’s are.

Mass Following People

Their have been post’s written in regards to easily getting more people to follow you on twitter. In most cases it is the same scenario each time, follow a mass amount of people at one time and hope they follow you back. You might not have anything in common with these people, but you do not care, you just want your follower number to go up quickly. Some even will stop following the people who have followed them back. It can work for you, but are those the types of people you want to try and talk to? It is a tag, your it kind of method. You tag a person to follow and hope they follow you back. In this screen shot you can see an example of a twitter accounts that are using this technique in an effort to get more twitter followers.

Who in their right mind can actually follow and keep up with 26,000 or even 17,000 different people? Then again, by looking at the amount of updates they have, chances are they do not even talk to most of those people. They just want to increase their follower count quickly so they can then tweet about a new blog post or product they are selling. This method can work for some easy traffic to your site, I would just rather use twitter to build up my friend’s whom I actually talk to and not just hit them with my new posts every day.

Mass Auto Tweet (aka auto spam your followers)

For those of you who do not know, you can find application’s out that will allow you to auto tweet for you at certain timed intervals. This can come in handy if you are not in front of your computer for an extended period of time and want to keep your followers up to date on things. Well here is a case of it going wrong and just flat out spamming your followers with a bunch of links.

This image was taken from TwailerTwash, which is run by Edward Lewis @pageoneresults who gave me permission to straight up steal his image. This is only a small image of the auto tweet by bhartzer in a single day, you can see the others on twailertwash. Look at the times of each tweet, they are back to back to back and repeating themselves. Doing this will ensure a loss of twitter followers as you are just filling their tweet window with a bunch of crap.

Only Tweet About Your Posts And Submissions

Twitter should be used as a tool to actually communicate with other people on the network, not just to link bomb followers with your posts or social media submissions. For the month of October, the above user did nothing but drop links to his posts, social media site submissions, etc in an effort to have people vote up his submissions. I just noticed this as I was looking back at his previous tweets, do not use twitter as a platform to only drop your links. Yes you might have a few thousand followers, but how many of them are active on twitter?

Tweet About EVERYTHING

Twitter is a communication tool, a way of telling your friends and followers about what it is you are currently doing. A good example that just happened recently was on Halloween night with @TheNanny612. Shana is the author behind Social Desire and has a 5 yr. old son was bit in the face by the family dog and was rushed to the hospital to get stitches. While waiting at the hospital she decided to tweet about what was going on. At least a dozen people had tweeted back with their gratitude and if they could help in anyway. This was a good example of using twitter to tweet about what is going on for you, she got reassurance knowing her online friends were there to help get her through this. Grant it, I think her son did a better job then she did, he took the stitches like a champ and was ready to show them off in school on Monday. Having kids of my own, I was also concerned that her son did not get to go out and trick or treat, so I had a few pounds of candy left over and was ready to ship it out Saturday morning. He had done his trick or treating two days prior, so he had his candy stash ready to go. If you were a child and did not get to go out for candy, you would be pissed I am sure. Shana went on to make a video talking about the experience and the online community.

Now in a different situation, tweeting about every move you make is just annoying. Do your followers care that you are pouring yourself a bowl of cereal, drinking the milk, rinsing out the bowl, putting the bowl in the sink, going to the bathroom, forgetting to wipe, tweeting about not caring about forgetting to wipe, blah blah blah blah blah. That is just overkill and you will lose followers by talking about every breathing moment of your life. Yes I understand twitter is a great social tool, but going overboard like that is more of a holy shit that person needs to go.

Wrong…Seriously Just Wrong

This is not as serious as the headline reads, just busting on @djpasiley who had sent me a DM regarding a Halloween party where clothing was optional, how he found them, invited, them etc. So I told him I wanted pictures for proof…and I got this instead.

A Halloween party where clothing is optional, that would have made for some creative costume designs. Yet he FAILED on the pictures. We are still on speaking terms, somewhat that is for now…If you like listening to music while you work, he is always blipping his music to his twitter followers.

(*Update) Bonus Method

@AndyBeard sent me a tweet with another thing people do that can have you lose your followers. Having your links go to a 404 error page. Before sending your tweets, at least make sure the link works properly. I have seen this time and time again and does get annoying. It is like crying wolf, where after a while people will stop running to your aid because their is no damn wolf. In this case the links just never works, so why am I going to keep clicking on them? For those of you who do not know Andy, please climb out from your underground cave, the man is full of knowledge. Check out his niche marketing blog and Collective Thoughts which he also helps write.