Ok, I have to admit I don’t really have one but it seems that lately few people adopted a very bad Twitter strategy. (Follow at your own risk!), they scrap people’s profile and follow hundred to thousands of twitters profile within a very short time in order to win few twitter followers.

But In case you have no idea what twitter is, It is a communication utility that connects between people and let them exchange short status that answer the popular question: What are you doing?

In its essence, the service is pretty simple and solve a basic need; communication and therefore people have found multiple uses for twitter.

Some people use it to connect with customers directly and answer their queries, some others use it to update about their product status or to communicate with people around them. The fact is that twitterland is filled with interesting individuals that offer us a sneak peak into their world. yummy!

But lately, lot of people employ very bad techniques to win an audience (twitter can be a fabulous marketing tool if used right). They pollute our streams with non-sense updates, scrape our profile to follow thousands  within minutes and put some more strain on twitter servers (and oh boy we know how unstable twitter can be).

Unfortunately these people get a significant audience and that should stop. How can you recognize them? easy:

• They tend to post non-sense updates or aggressively market their blogs or companies.
• They follow thousands of people, have few followers and few updates ( Divide followers by the people they follow and multiply by 100, if you get a number below 30% then be suspicious).
• If you have 2 different twitter accounts, and you get notified that the same guy follow both accounts within a very short interval (usually within the minute).
• If You get a direct reply from someone you’re not following asking you to follow her because she’s in bed and she’s bored (Yes, true story!).
• Try to engage them within a conversation and if you don’t get a response or even better get an answer that doesn’t make sense, they’re probably just bots.

Usually, I am unhappy with them following me, from time to time I block them as well, but I DO never follow them.

My twitter strategy is pretty simple, I follow relevant people, once a month I go over my twitters friend and remove people that aren’t updating or their updates aren’t relevant to me. I try to not follow many people since I won’t be able to engage all of them and give them the attention they deserve (usually adding 5 people a week). And most importantly, I try to keep a positive ratio between followers and people I follow.

I’d be interested to know what are your twitter strategy or what you are doing to identify the bad guys.
You’re invited to follow me in case you’re a human being and drop me a message.