In a recent post I considered the social network etiquette – the “netiquette” – of Following-back, particularly in Twitter. I’ve now reached that wonderful “critical point” where my Following grows daily without any “marketing effort”.

I do know that this is due to the weight of numbers already Following me, rather than a sudden, global appreciation of my scant published works. However…  

Welcome to you all and a big thanks for Following me.

Meanwhile, Twitter Corp is culling the many spammers’ accounts out there, so my Following also drops back a little every day as those unwelcome “fans” get erased. But the overall result is an increase in the total.

Personally, I’d rather be Followed by real people, so this is good.

I also spot Followers who slip quietly away after a few weeks, having captured my Followback. I’m continuing my policy of hoovering-up the unfaithful and returning the favor by unFollowing them back.

Who to Followback And Saying Thanks

I had been manually filtering my Followback responses and ran into a few minor “moral” dilemmas over my choices. I also realized very late that I should have been thanking my new Followers.

To resolve this, I started launching a series of  Tweets, “Tks 4 Following” followed by only 8 or 9 Followers’ handles, using the maximum number of characters allowed. Even tweeting twice daily, this was still taking too long, as I had a massive backlog, growing daily – not that I am complaining, certainly not.

Also – my feed was getting clogged with Tweets thanking people for Following rather than sparkling, incisive content.  Not good. Not good, at all.

I had also begun to build Lists of my Followers, depending upon how I categorize them. I’m now having second thoughts as the social networking administration builds and I have more stories in submission… and there’s that novel to finish…

Solution, Perhaps?

Regretfully, I decided to establish an automated system which would Followback every new Follower and send a personal  “thank you message”.

Later that very same day, Twitter Corp decided to ban these systems.

Actual Solution

The only way is to send individual “thankyous” to each Follower going back a long way. Now I know EXACTLY why my kids were so reluctant to send appreciative letters and cards after birthdays and Christmas.

Ho-hum. C’est la vie. Back to manual, personalized thankyous…