“I just unfollowed <@InsertTwitterNameHere> right back. Thanks to #NutshellMail for showing me quitters!”

Wow. I signed up the corporate account for Nutshell Mail from Constant Contact because it can help me manage the often-unwieldy side of Twitter, keeping track of new followers, latest replies and mentions in case I miss something on Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Whether you’re building a brand for your company or your own social media presence on Twitter, you don’t want anything to slip past you. Plus it’s free!

twittaquitta.com

You also don’t want to be too stingy with your “Following” methodology. You can’t always go by someone’s bio, though no bio at all raises a red flag for me. Keeping the brand integrity in mind, I follow back most of my followers, including those with wholly different interests, because you never know who you can help or who can help you. This also includes the occasional friendly bot.

Along the same lines, I’m equally curious to see who my unfollowers are, because that can potentially help me figure out if I’m doing something wrong.

As my unfollowers are largely consisting of blind cats, the Next Big Thing in Music or those accounts that never tweet but somehow have 7,000 followers, I think I’m doing all right (for now).

But look what happens when NutshellMail gets ahold of your unfollowers: After the person exercises their Twitter rights and unfollows your account, NutshellMail sends you an email with a “Latest Quitters” section. If you’re following one of those quitters, you see a little “unfollow” button under their name. When you click it, you get the message heading this post–all ready to go as a Tweet if you just click one more button.

Really, NutshellMail? Will people think I’m worth following if I send such a nasty little message out in the public eye? I don’t think so. I’ve seen similar messages on other people’s Tweet streams and to be honest, it makes me think a little less of them. It smacks of using social media as a weapon, especially when you’re hiding behind the relative anonymity of an avatar. Answering negativity with negativity can lead to a whole ugly mess, with your brand suffering for it.

So while I’ll continue to use NutshellMail as a free monitoring service, I hope they reconsider their sour grapes messaging.

What do you think? Am I just overreacting in this changing world of social media etiquette, especially when using a free service?