A Click-Check; the only way to be sure.

Recently on twitter, I found my follower count going up in some odd intervals, and whilst I fully appreciate the genuine account holders out there who are curious, hungry for knowledge and information, wanting to interact and grow etc, there's an awful lot of what looks like generated or spambot style accounts hanging around too. If this is news to you, then perhaps you haven't been using twitter that long, or don't use it beyond a quick update of your social activity, ad hoc. 

But it can be a concern when you're trying to gauge who is following your output, in terms of feedback and metrics. A few months ago, I mentioned tweet metrics to a friend, and he matter of factly said 'just divide that figure by four', which sounded like a rough and ready way of aggregating. But it makes a level of sense, if there are lots of spambot style accounts on there, just following, clicking and retweeting to other sites to potentially generate revenue, rather than build content and become a genuine participant and customer/consumer, and vice versa. 

So what can you do beyond just accepting everyone willy nilly, so to speak?

Run a CLICK-CHECK. It really is that simple. If in doubt about the authenticity of the account and wether you'd want to interact with the identity ( or person) behind it , click on the link, if available, in their bio and see where it takes you. Also, have a look at their content and interactivity. Alternatively, the other way to CLICK-CHECK, is to rsvp ( respond) to one of their tweets. Notwithstanding their shyness, people don't always have the time to respond immediately, so patience is required. And repeat any or both of the two aforementioned, as required. It goes without saying, that it works right across the board for most, if not all, forms of social media.

There we have it..a few paragraphs of what I like to call 'stating the obvious', but if it helps someone along in their way to sorting the wheat from the chaff on social media, then it's been worth the time spent in writing it. Come to think of it, I wish someone would develop an app to help with this, or twitter and the others would tighten up their coding to weed some of this stuff out. Some form of randomised authentication could be implemented, too. 

Until then, Click, and click again ( if necessary).



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