Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll

Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Lee Odden

Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll

With Twitter riding the social media wave to a $1 billion valuation, the attention from celebrities, usefulness for everything from real-time communications in natural disasters to serving as a profitable marketing channel, a momentum of interest has spawned in how to make the most out of spending time on Twitter. Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. But Twitter and social communication applications like it are a lot more than just tools. One question about Twitter best practices that often comes up deals with how people (not bots) decide to follow one another on Twitter.

I ran an informal poll (on Twitter of course, another of it’s many uses) to proof a few ideas I had on what factors weigh most heavily for people when deciding whether to follow another Twitter account. My initial influences included location, bio, offline connections and others. You can read the replies to that poll here: #whyfollow. A self-assessment in combination with the informal poll feedback are what power the potential answers in this Reader Poll.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

By sharing your top reasons for following others on Twitter, we can all learn how to be more useful to the communities we’re trying to reach.

If one or more of your answers are in the “Other” category, then please add them in the comments below. Sharing this poll with others is GREATLY appreciated. Can we get over 200 responses? How about 500?