Do you take the time to weed out the list of folks you follow on Twitter? Lisa Barone, Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., culls through her Twitter list monthly and stops following some people while adding others to her list.  I do the same thing every few months and each time I do that, I lose followers. I’m not obsessed with how many followers I have, but if someone stops following me, I wonder why.

In her Small Business Trends post, “20 Reasons People Unfollow You On Twitter,” Barone shares the results of a quick poll she did with Twitter users.  All of the tips are insightful and worth reading, especially these four.

1. You’re a self-promoter: Lots of people mentioned that they were turned off by Twitter users who do nothing but promote their own content. You want to drive traffic to your site, but there’s other content out there.

2. You’re too self-centered. Twitter is about connecting with others and not making it about you.

3. You auto-DM: Nothing hurts more than choosing to follow someone you think is cool…and then being hit with the dread auto spam DM. There will always be something annoying and creepy about getting a sales pitch via DM. Build a relationship before you try to sell something to someone.

4. You don’t share anything new. There’s nothing wrong with retweeting unless that’s all you do. Share new information when you can.