I maintain a photography-based twitter account @dabpix. It’s a great way to see what other people are doing, discover new resources, get ideas and inspiration, and to share my own work. It can be a great tool, but if left unmanaged, it can produce a mountain of brain clutter. So here are my 10 rules for managing a photography twitter account. They are personal, so I don’t expect other tweeps to agree with all of them. Feel free to steal and adapt whatever seems helpful. So, in no particular order:
1. If someone follows me who sells images on artistwebsite.com or crate.com or etsy or whatever, I don’t block them. Instead, I put them in a list called kitsch (protected, of course, so they can’t see what I’ve done). Then I mute them so they don’t fill my feed with sentimental over-HDR’d garbage.
2. If, after a couple weeks, a person I’ve followed doesn’t follow me back, I unfollow them. They’re being discourteous. There are exceptions, of course. For example, the rule doesn’t apply to accounts that are actually interesting.
3. The converse is also true. I try to follow people back. This rule has its exceptions, too. For example, If some guy follows me who’s obsessed with stiletto heels, I don’t feel obliged. After all, my interest is photography. He should know that because I said so in my bio.
4. I never follow someone whose bio says something like this: “We respect copyright. If you see your image here, msg us & we’ll take it down.” Clearly, they don’t respect copyright and don’t have the intelligence to understand that permission to post someone else’s image is something you have to get before you post the image. I instantly block them. They are evil and I don’t want them anywhere near me.
5. If someone sends a dm inviting me to like their Facebook page, uh … why have a social media account directing people to another social medial account? I don’t get it. Isn’t allowing your privacy to be exploited by one large online corporation good enough? They may keep an interesting twitter account, but this dm is ignore-worthy.
6. I don’t follow people who have a cat photo for their profile image or who tweet an inordinate number of cat photos. They’re cataleptic. Or catatonic. They need professional help.
7. I never follow or follow back if (a) the person’s bio says they love God, (b) they’re account is locked, (c) they follow 200,000 people (when are they ever going to look at my account?), (d) they suffer from twitter diarrhea i.e. they tweet every 10 seconds, (e) they haven’t uploaded a profile image, (f) their last tweet is dated 3 months ago, (g) they hold themselves out as some kind of social media consultant/specialist/guru, (h) they use some kind of spam screening service that requires me to visit an external website and verify that I’m a human being (anyone who actually interacts with their own twitter account can figure that out).
8. If someone’s bio says something like: “I love hiking, kayaking, needlepoint, stamp collecting, reading, parasailing, pressing wild flowers, eating at fine restaurants, travel to exotic locales, & photography.” I move on. Even though I share their interest in photography, they have no, uh, focus. I’ll have to weed out 50 posts for one I’m interested in.
9. Similarly, if someone’s bio presents a long list of interests, concluding with “and I love fucking beautiful women,” I don’t spend a lot of time browsing through his posts. I’d love to get the twit into therapy, but since there’s no button for that, I have to settle for blocking him.
10. Finally, if I notice that people unfollow me, I don’t get myself twisted in a knot over it. I unfollow lots of people. It’s unreasonable to suppose that everyone out there shares my interests and sensibilities.