Welcome New Twitter Follower

If you're reading this because you've just followed me on Twitter, thanks...I appreciate it. If you did it solely so I'd follow you back, then you may be disappointed since I don't auto-follow everyone who follows me. If I don't follow you back, it may be because you run afoul of one of a few general guidelines I have.

I probably won't follow you if:

1) Your friends-to-followers ratio is well over 1:1 -or- you have way more friends than followers.
If you are following 1,200 people (i.e., have 1,200 friends) and only have 100 followers, then you're probably up to something. Perhaps you just joined and are trying to build up a huge followerbase by doing mass followings in hopes of snagging lots of auto-follows. In that case, I'm not going to contribute to your game.

2) You haven't tweeted in a long time, if ever.
Why should I follow you when you aren't contributing to the conversation?

3) You don't have a bio or a pic or a website. And no, Myspace pages don't count.
If you aren't going to reveal anything about yourself, why should I follow you? Give me a reason to find you interesting.

4) I'm not finding your recent tweets very thought-provoking, entertaining, or compelling in some way.
You may be doing everything right, but I still may not follow you. Sorry...it might just be that we don't have much in common...it happens. Or, perhaps your tweeting every meal, belch, and bowel movement just doesn't do it for me.

5) You're offensive.
I don't follow raving lunatics, extremists of any kind (political, religious, sports fans, etc.), people who express themselves only in crass banalities, or those who TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

6) You're on Twitter solely to sell me something.
Are you an SEO? Social media expert? Online marketing consultant? Bean curd and flaxseed extract vendor? Sorry...I'm not interested and far too busy bored with you to listen to your pitch.

7) You play games following and unfollowing.
Update: I just was reminded of another reason. If you follow me and then unfollow me shortly afterwards when I don't follow you immediately, and then follow me again when I do follow you, you're getting unfollowed and blocked. You're not only annoying, but you're gaming the system and I don't like it.

Most likely, if you're an actual person with a bio, a photo, and something reasonably interesting (IMO) to say, I'll follow you right back. But if not, well, consider this post our official "it's not me, it's you" talk.

p.s. If you've landed here from my Twitter profile page and aren't finding it very useful to discover just who this schlub called Craig Froehle is, then check out my abbreviated GearBits bio or the longer bio on my personal website.