I realized this morning that there are a bunch if things I check when making a decision to follow someone on Twitter – here’s what I do.

flickr: steve_brace (CC BY 2.0)

- Do you have a real avatar? A real picture, not a logo and definetly not the default Twitter avatar.
- Are more people following you than you are following? This is typically a good indication of interesting posts.
- What’s your tweet to friends ratio? If you are following 600 people but have only tweeted 6 updates then I’m not going to follow you.
- Do you pimp Twitter or engage in conversations? If your last 20 updates or so are exclusively outbound tweets with no retweets or replies then I’m probably not going to follow you.
- Are you here to sell? If every tweet includes a bit.ly link and a vague post like “you have to read this” then I’m not going to follow you.
- Where do you do your tweeting? if every update is from ‘web’ then I’m probably not going to follow you. The Twitter website is not well designed to allow you to engage in conversation, rather it’s built for simple updates.

So… would I follow you?