I received a question last week from a reader of Twitter In 30 Minutes. The reader was puzzled why no one was reading his tweets, or responding:
“No one reads my tweets. I send tweets to Fox News and other places and have never had anyone read or respond to my tweets or follow me. Any suggestions?”
From his email, it was apparent that there were actually several problems:
- No one is following him on Twitter
- No one is reading his tweets
- When he @mentions another account, no one responds
It is very frustrating when you start a Twitter account and begin tweeting, but don’t have interactions — not even other people following your account!
Fortunately, this reader had a partial fix to the “no one is following me” problem. I took a quick look at his profile, and determined that his account was protected. This means the only people who could read his tweets are those who he had approved. I emailed back and explained why that was causing an issue, and recommended that he remove the protection:
“People you don’t know are less likely to follow protected accounts (mainly because they can’t see what you are tweeting about!) so my first recommendation is to open your account so anyone can follow you and see what you are tweeting about. You can do this by clicking on the gear icon on Twitter.com and then selecting “Security and Privacy” and then uncheck the box that says ‘Protect my tweets’”
You can see the “Protect my tweets” box in the screenshot below:
I also suggested that he start following more people and responding to them from time to time. In Chapter 3 of Twitter In 30 Minutes, I actually recommend several tactics for following interesting accounts and friends.
In addition, there was his specific question around @FoxNews (4+ million followers), which also applies to other popular accounts, from Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk, 14+ million followers) to @Oprah (25 million followers and climbing!):
“Once you have started following accounts and responding to them, don’t be surprised if some people respond to you while others don’t. This is particularly true of famous people or accounts with millions of followers, like Fox News — it would take too much time for them to respond to everyone who mentions them in a Tweet, so they almost never respond to anyone.”
Lastly, I let the reader know that I would follow him — you can, too, by clicking on @ilamont and pressing the follow button.
