Just recently established my Twitter account. I am interested in following editors and PR folks so this seems like a good plan. However, even though I havent' sent out one little tweet, several women who have porn sites want to follow me! Very strange! I only have one follower associated with media that I have accepted.
Is anyone else with Twitter accounts being bombarded by undesirable followers? If so, do you block them and report them as spam? This is what I am doing, plus I have now set up privacy settings but this hasn't stopped them. I never imagined there would be so many women with very graphic porn sites.
This situation is preventing me from sending out my first tweet. Perhaps I'm being overly fussy but I don't think so. I would not like the editor of National Geographic or any other publications see that one of my "followers' has a porn site. EEEK!
Replies
Hi Susan, just tweet whatever you want, like an organic, natural conversation. And if you want to get attention, use hashtags that are relevant to your destination or story.
Blocking will not prevent undesirables from seeing your tweets, but it does have certain advantages. From the Twitter help center, below:
Thanks everyone for your candid and detailed comments. Any and all information helps when one is first starting to learn something new. My tweets @frostphotos are not private but I will keep removing the undesirables. The next challenge will be to write interesting tweets. I'm especially interested in tweeting about my recent travels and upcoming travels. So, I my first tweet is about a beautiful castle in Denver which is now a B&B.
I had the same rash of undesirable followers and finally started ignoring them. Had a similar problem with the blog for a while when I was seeing a number of interesting url's primarily from Russia and Ukraine. A few months later all interest had faded. Generally, I am pleased when anyone thinks my thoughts are worth reading be it a tweet or a travel post. I am still concentrating on quality and not quantity tweets - probably not the way to build a numerical following, but those who do will not feel they've wasted their time. I do wonder about those who follow some 20,000 or more. . .do they have lives beyond Twittersville?
I agree, it's about quantity not quality and beyond that, quality interaction. People with so many followers are not even using Twitter for niche interaction. They probably have preferred lists so they can @ accounts they really care about.
Susan, a couple of thoughts that might help:
Ed, good point! Never noticed the "who" or "whom" :-)
I block undesirables. I don't want them to see what I'm up to any more than the opposite. Just start following a few people you like, and get a few people you know - on these boards for example - to follow you so build up a small group. Others will come. They'll realize you're new... If you make your tweets interesting, even if you have few followers some people will reciprocate. At least that's how it was with me.
Ditto what Michael Holland said. You'll soon find, as well, that all those worthless porn/spam followers will "quit" you, too. I use Nutshell Mail to monitor my followers and quitters. And I only report people who @ me with spam.
Some programs even use automated following tools, which is why you'll get random followers from time to time.
Developing a quality Twitter network takes time, but it's possible and totally worth it. I thrive on it.
Yes, you're being overly fussy. There is no such thing as 'accepting' a follower. That's the beauty of Twitter. Either you follow someone back, or you don't. Some people are obsessed with only following people who follow them back, which to me seems very childish. I follow people I find interesting, and whose tweets may sometimes be worthy of an RT. It doesn't really matter to me whether they follow me back, or not. I have over 2,000 followers, but I only follow half that number.
Actually, the fact that you haven't tweeted anything is probably one contributor to you getting so many 'junk' followers. Until you tweet something, you aren't going to get quality followers. I, for one, don't follow people who haven't tweeted anything, since I look at their timeline before I follow them back. Twitter is all about reputation - followers, retweets, favorites, etc. You can't build a reputation until you start tweeting.
I only report spammers who directly @ me junk stuff. They're pretty easy to identify, as they will generally not be following anybody yet have hundreds of tweets (makes you wonder why Twitter doesn't identify them automatically). In three years of using Twitter, I've never blocked anybody. Oddly, I hardly get any junk followers these days. Some people I wonder about, but they may just be planning a trip to the part of the world I cover and are looking for tips.