The following is just my personal opinion.  How you use Twitter is entirely up to you and as far as I’m concerned, you are right.

With that said, assuming you are in sales, or in the “engagement” business I believe in the AutoFollow.  I set mine up in using SocialOomph.com so that anytime someone follows me I automatically follow them back.

I know what your going to say…

Are you crazy?  Won’t you get a ton of spam?  Aren’t you worried about those nutjobs?  Don’t you check out their twit stream before?

My answer, No, No, No and NO.  Here’s why.

There’s a couple of concepts that come into play.  Let’s start with time.  I want to spend the least amount of time possible vetting someone to determine if they are worthy or not.  SocialOomph.com does some of that already.  With them I’ve “opted out” of Auto DM’s coming from their service. Twitter’s spam team will delete spam accounts flagged by the masses.

Then there’s the mass of peeps.  If you followed everyone, how could you possibly pay attention? I let technology, namely Seesmic Desktop help me sort that mass of people.  I couldn’t possibly keep track of them all.  It puts just some of them into bite sized columns.  I have my list of 100 peeps that I am engaged with.  I create new columns for upcoming events (like #REBCPHX). And if anyone @ reply’s or DM’s me, there’s columns for that as well.  I even have columns for people who misspell my name.

Here’s the #1 reason I do this.

I believe that someday someone who followed me, lurked me for years, never engaged me, might also come to need me.  When they do, it might be something they’re afraid to ask in public.  If so, they might try to DM me.  If I’m NOT following them, how are they going to feel when twitter tells them “Mike Mueller is not following you”?  Dejected? Rejected? Did I just lose a sale?  I might have.  I’ll probably never even know it.

So why shut the door when technology gives us the power to follow everyone, yet pay close attention to those that are closest to us?

And when it comes to Zapping the Spammers – it doesn’t get much easier than this…

– Thanks Amanda (@FunomenalRealtr)  for the post idea!

BTW: Do you have a Twitter Follow Policy?     I do.