Bluebird2

Tony Baldasaro blogged yesterday that he just unsubscribed from every single person on Twitter that he was following. All 5,000 of them. He is starting again from scratch, deciding anew whom to follow. Here’s the comment that I left him:

I concur with Chris Lehmann. Use Twitter the way it feels right to you.

My usage is more like Chris’, I believe. I am following nearly 4,500 and am followed by many more. Here’s the way I think about those two groups:

1. Following – I don’t subscribe to celebrities or other sources that are less informational, but I do subscribe to anyone that might feed me good resources that I’ll care about. I then organize them into lists and/or use hashtags to categorize the incoming information. I don’t mind if there’s a lot of other stuff in my streams besides resources. I’m getting pretty adept at scanning a column in Hootsuite, spotting the stuff I want, and ignoring the rest. I’m not concerned about how many I’m following because I figure that the 2 seconds it took for me to subscribe to someone may pay off a month from now when that person shares something in which I’ll find value. The bigger my net, the more chance I have of catching something useful. I think about Twitter like fishing in a fast-moving river: I don’t worry about all of the fish I missed but I’m always delighted about the ones that I do catch!

2. Followers – I primarily use my Twitter account to share out resources. 90%+ of what I tweet out is a link to something I saw online and thought was interesting or useful: a quote, blog post, web site, new report, video, someone else’s tweet, etc. About 9% of my Twitter use is conversations with other people, and the remaining 1% might be occasional silliness (like the couple of Halloween pics I tweeted last evening). That ratio seems to be working well for me and, I guess, my followers since my numbers keep growing and my stuff keeps getting reshared (which I want because I want to reach people and be helpful).

I looked at the new, short list of people that you’re now following. That’s a great group that’s guaranteed to feed you awesome stuff (I also found a couple of folks I thought that I was following but wasn’t so thank you!). I’m honored to be on that list; please know that I am appreciative. I’ll look forward to our continued interactions in the Twittersphere.

All my best.

Tony’s post reminds us that social networks are like gardens (thank you, David Warlick). They require some nurturing and, yes, some pruning now and then. Sometimes they may even be like prairies, requiring a full burn to nurture new, positive growth. Head on over to Tony’s post and join the conversation: How do you decide whom you follow on Twitter?

Image credit: Bigstock, Blue bird