“Some porn account just followed me on Twitter. What should I do? Should I protect my tweets by locking down my account?”

I get this question a lot. Short answer. “No.”

Longer answer.

Look, those account are all over the Twitterverse, and they aren’t going away. We all know they exist, and we know they are going to follow you. Guess what? We don’t care.

Who follows you isn’t nearly as important as who you follow. You choose who you follow. You don’t choose who follows you. So if someone is going to check out your online reputation, they are going to focus on the accounts you’ve chosen to follow.

But, let’s face it. Most people who check you out online aren’t even going to look at the list of your followers. It takes too much time. We’re going to look at your content. What do you post? Who do you retweet? That says lots more about you than some random people who spam-botted your account.

Remember, Twitter isn’t like Facebook. Those folks aren’t going to show up in your main feed, and you’re probably the only person who knows they are following you. If they really bother you, report them as a spam. Then they’ll go away.

Oh, and I don’t recommend services like TrueTwit where someone has to be validated to follow you. If someone fake follows you and you don’t follow them back, they will more than likely unfollow you within a day or so and be gone. Don’t make legitimate followers jump through hoops. Most of them won’t bother.

If you want to attract good followers, focus on content. Tune in next week when I’m going to do a whole post on good social media content.