You Can’t Please All the People All of the Time: The Qwitter Phenomenon
I’ve seen a lot of Tweets lately about a new Twitter tool called Qwitter. Qwitter will email you to tell you who has stopped following you and what you tweeted just before they removed you from their timeline.
I can see people really beating themselves up and even getting upset by folks unfollowing them, especially over the Tweet that supposedly sent them clicking.
I have kept well away from this tool for a number of reasons:
- People follow and unfollow on Twitter all the time. If you get upset every time someone stops following your Tweets, you’re going to be upset A LOT. Your energies can be spent much better elsewhere.
- People unfollow on Twitter for numerous reasons – your last Tweet is not necessarily the culprit for why someone stopped following you. I go through the people I’m following every few weeks and just look at who’s Tweets I have got the most from and who I enjoy listening to. Any that I unfollow have not necessarily done something wrong, but if I follow too many people I can’t keep up with the timeline and I will sometimes unfollow to make room for someone else for a while (doesn’t mean I have discarded you for ever).
- People unfollow because they have had enough of a particular topic. So, while your last Tweet may be the culprit, it’s more likely to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Recently, I noticed a lot of people fed-up with reading political tweets, especially during the live debates, and suddenly they were unsubscribing from anyone tweeting politics. While yours may have been the last Tweet they read before unfollowing, it’s nothing that you have done specifically. They just want to avoid a particular topic. You were exercising your right to Tweet about something that interests you and they were exercising their right not to listen.
- It may not have been the most recent tweet that caused someone to hit the remove button. That person could have been mulling over something you said for hours before decided they didn’t want to follow you. And even if they didn’t like what you said, what are you going to do? Change who you are? Change the things you do to make your Tweets more interesting, just for them?
I don’t consider myself thick-skinned but working in radio made me realise something important: you simply cannot please all of the people all of the time. Most people didn’t tell me to my face why they didn’t like listening to me on the radio but they would tell other presenters. Similarly, I would hear why some listeners didn’t like my fellow presenters on the station. Reasons would range from: “I don’t like the sound of her voice” to “she’s too cheerful in the morning” (clearly that one wasn’t directed at me). Or more laughable “I don’t like the music he plays” (even though we all had the same music playlist) and “She was rude about Pamela Anderson” (yes, that one WAS me).
Essentially, we humans can be irrational and quirky beings; we make our decisions emotionally. How many times have you stopped doing or liking something, but you can’t quite say why? You may justify it rationally but the real reason will be something a lot less sane.
So, should we be worried as marketers if a lot of people stop following us on Twitter (or anywhere else)? In radio, we received quarterly listener figures. If your show had lost too many listeners in a quarter, you would be worried and try to analyse why. If it happened for more than one quarter you would expect an invitation to the Programme Controller’s office, followed by an escort out of the building by security (thankfully, it never happened to me).
If you notice a significant percentage of people unfollowing you on Twitter (or unsubscribing from your emails) over a reasonable length of time, and it is more than can be considered a natural drop-off, then that’s the time to question whether you should be doing things differently.
But, please don’t get in a twitter over Qwitter!
Lisa
(and yes, I am aware there is no such word as unfollow in the English language, but it has become a part of Twitter speak and no doubt will appear in the dictionary in the not too distant future)
I agree with you on this. I have decided not to even look at Qwitter because it seems like it would paralyze me into not tweeting for fear someone would unfollow and then my tweets wouldn’t sound like me anymore. No Qwitter for me.
@KimDushinski had something to say about Biggest Obstacle in Mobile Marketing
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Hello Girls,
I also see the people worrying why someone would unfollow after their last tweet. In fact some send out 5 tweets about how the person was wrong to unfollow them.
Fact is there are many people that follow you only so you follow them back and then they unfollow. Those people are going for a follow number so they can seem important. They can not do it because they are interested if they have no intentions of actually having a conversation, just a big self serving number. I would hate to think someone spent time re accessing their tweets because of someone like that.
I have never used Quitter and doubt I ever will. I have had far to many jobs on and off line that put pressure on me to be a certain way. I was miserable. Now, I am just me and if I loose all my followers – heck I may never know (I never log in on the web so, I don’t see numbers). Holy smokes, that’s the answer! Use Tweetdeck or Twhirl and just don’t look at your web page, if you don’t know how many followers you have then you’ll never know if you have less.
I’ll be tweeting to myself soon!
Sheryl Loch had something to say about HTML Picture Linking Code
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Here’s a tool I will NEVER use! http://tinyurl.com/5vcyc6
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I’m not very thick skinned unfortunately.. I take my qwitter messages personally
But it is interesting to do a bit of analysis about what people don’t like
Brent Hodgson had something to say about Market Samurai
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I actually like Qwitter. I find it interesting to watch the Twitter spammers come and go..
Some will start following me only to leave within hours when I don’t auto follow them back.
Some Internet Marketers follow me and then unfollow as soon as I follow back.
Some of my “Christian” followers will unfollow me when I don’t live up to their expectations of what a Christian Evangelist is suppose to be.
The point is…. I never change what I want to say or who I am to keep followers.
When it comes down to it, I spend more time trying to figure out why anyone would want to follow me in the first place.
Karen
http://www.parentinghelpme.com
KarenKramer had something to say about Sugar Shock! – School Ban on Sweets
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Brent, if you can do the analysis without getting too hung up on it, that’s great. But we wouldn’t want you to ruin your pretty boy image by getting worry lines from fretting over Qwitter.
Sheryl, I’ll always follow you, so not quite to yourself!
Karen, we follow you because you always keep us entertained.
Lisa x
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I’m not a Qwitter. If I were, that would mean I would care what people who don’t even know me think about me. I don’t. I care what my family thinks. I care what my friends think. I care what my customers think.
Twitter’s magic is not about racking up followers or winning a popularity contest of sorts. Twitter’s magic is that it’s a remarkable way to connect to people with whom you share common interests, be it personal or professional.
If I were a politician or people-pleaser (gasp!), maybe I would care about Qwitter. But I’m not, so I don’t.
Susan Smith had something to say about Happy Halloween – No Trick, A Treat
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On the one hand Twitter (and other social networking applications) lend themselves to this kind of vanity app. We all want to be liked, and we all want to be validated. It is human nature and one of the primary forces that drives us. These things aren’t going away.
On the other hand social networking is all about being genuine, transparent, and being yourself. ANY kind of feedback will cause a change in that (httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_tNzeouHC4) whether you think you can stay at arms length or not.
I don’t know what makes people follow OR leave me and it’s not that I don’t care about them, but I am not using Twitter as a barometer of how cool/funky/friendly/bossy/bitchy I am
As the great philosophy Popeye once said ” I ams what I ams”
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I don’t do Quitter. I is who I is, so those who unsub simply aren’t a good match for my message. Plus, there are tons of stats available from Aweber, Analytics, Feedburner etc. that give me a good idea of what people do and don’t like.
Michelle MacPhearson had something to say about Analysis of Obama v. McCain in the Social Media Space
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I’m not entirely sure that Qwitter is very accurate anyway. I signed up, just out of morbid curiosity. Got a message shortly after that someone had quit following me after a tweet that went out a couple of months _before_ I signed up for Qwitter. Not sure if that means it has the power to go back into the past or if it doesn’t tie the quitting to the right post all the time. Or if I truly have only had one person quit following me in the past three months? Wow.
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