Twitter has been a favorite communication tool of mine since I first signed up in 2008.

It helped me connect with a bunch of folks locally and around the world.

The ScLoHo persona really became public and well known due to it being my Twitter handle.

But as I prepare for 2015, I’ve been making some changes in my activity and that includes unfollowing some people on Twitter that I wasn’t really following anyway.

Before I began this pruning process, I had over 4000 followers and was following about 2600.

As I write this article at the end of November, my follower count is just under 4000 and it may drop.

I don’t really care, because I am more about building value than a bunch of followers that I’ll never interact with.

By the way, way back when I was only following a few hundred Tweeps, it was getting unmanageable so here’s what I did…

Twitter Lists.

Everyone I followed I added to a list or two.  There were lists like Fort Wayne or Out of Town Hoosiers. And there is one list that if I was following you, it was the list you wanted to be on.  It’s called the RF list.

RF stands for Really Follow.

When I have my laptop open I use TweetDeck.  I have a few columns set up to watch but the main one is the RF list. Unless you are on that list, I’m not seeing your tweets.

In order to do my pruning I started looking at all 2600 Tweeps I was officially following and decided if they were a keeper or not.

I’ll be continuing this practice through out the new year and get down to a few hundred again that I am following.  If you want to follow me go ahead.

A couple of observations and insights over the last few years:

When I started on Twitter I followed nearly anyone that followed me.  Then as that number grew to over 1000 I began to always make sure I had more people following me than I was following.  This gives the illusion that you are worth following.

For awhile I was pretty active on Twitter and ignoring Facebook and the other social media platforms.  That changed a couple years ago when I started working full time in Social Media and needed to really crank up my use of Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

Now I’m still on Twitter but I also do daily updates on Facebook and weekly postings on Linked In.

Let me ask you…

What social media platforms are you using and what changes are you planning or have you made recently?