“I missed you so much… I followed you today…” – Oran Juice Jones, “The Rain”

I follow a lot of people. Many of them I wouldn’t have known about if they hadn’t followed me.  I am a firm believer in reaching out to people that you think need to know you. Here’s the thing though… I don’t always follow back. I have my reasons. Here are fifteen reasons I probably won’t follow you back.

1. Your description may have “internet marketing”, “multi-level marketing,” “income stream,” “marketeer (is that anything like a musketeer? Do you have a sword or feathered hat or something interesting at least?),” or some other words that don’t give me the warm and fuzzies. Try words that give me the warm and fuzzies, like “snarky”, “Taco Bell”, “Dr. Who”, or something really funny.  Oh, I am also not following SEO experts.  Bottom line, if you are one – then I have already been to your website, discovered how amazing you are, and I am already following you.  If not… then I guess you aren’t REALLY an expert.

2. You haven’t tweeted in the last 6 months. I am not going to follow you in anticipation of your next tweet.  You tweet monthly… what if you tweet and I miss it?!? Too much pressure.

3. You are a teenager. Now this doesn’t apply to those prodigies who tweet about life and philosophy – only those who have #teamfollowback #teamjustinbieber or #teamanything in their description. Adults who are on teams… I am cool with… For the most part.

4. You cuss a lot for no @#$% reason at all.

5. You have 6 followers, and are following 142,004 people. I don’t even know if this is possible on Twitter, but if it is, I am not following you.  You are probably a spam account, and if not… you’ll be okay – you are much too busy listening to a gazillion people to see if little ol’ me followed back.

6. You have 0 tweets…  *crickets*

7. You only tweet quotes. *more crickets – this time – louder ones*

8. You don’t actually talk to anyone – just send out blog posts and pics of your food.

9. You are a celebrity with over a million followers, and you follow 14 people. Not going to miss out on a really important news, or current event tweet because of an instagram of some grown man posing with his cat decked out in enough diamonds to feed a small nation for a generation. (I have a slight distrust for men with cats anyway – and a real distaste for those who actually dress them up for any reason other than potential youtube earnings.)

10. Everything you tweet has been typed out with an accent. Just. Why.

11. I follow your other account(s) and you tweet the same thing from all of them.

12. Your timeline has identical tweets for the last 7 days. I don’t know about you, but I have different thoughts several different times a day.  You should to – especially if you want me to follow you.

13. You tweeted me – yay! I go to your timeline, and you tweeted the same thing to 90 other people over the course of the last few hours. I no longer feel special…

14. Your avatar isn’t rated G. I’ll even take PG-13… just not porn por favor.

15. I didn’t even know you were following me! A lot of times, by the time I find a new follower, they have unfollowed before I even knew they were there.  Give me a #nowfollowing shout out!

So yes, I follow a lot of people.  I pay attention to their tweets.  When someone follows me, I go to their profile and check them out.  If I follow back, I have gone through this list with lightning speed, and I am ready to hear what you have to say.  If I don’t follow back, and you want to know what’s up – read this list again – you’ll know why.

P.S. Shout out to the hubby for suggesting the Oran Juice Jones quote and video.  There are a lot of 80’s R&B quotes that fly around our house…