Getting to 1000 Twitter followers amidst liberal blocking and unfollowing took seven months. Loosely chronicled, my Twitter journey began on April, 2009 but not before extensive research and settling on the following practices regarding follower counts:
- Don’t auto-follow – Examine followers’ Twitter stream and profile and determine if relevant, interesting or added value, personally and/or professionally
- Unfollow those that no longer add value – this inevitably leads to a reciprocal unfollow as many followers are simply users who follow to maintain their follower count. Many prominent Twitter users have confirmed this when mass-unfollowing, like Kevin Houchin who recently deleted and rebuilt his follows, and discovered that at least 4000 had an auto-unfollow set-up
- Block users identified as spam or spam-like, abusive, or possessing similar characteristics.
Of the 2153 users that followed me, 291 were promptly blocked. I also unfollowed 532 users who were no longer updating their account on a regular basis, or whose Twitter streams were no longer of interest or value. Most were following (using?) simply because I followed them, which I discovered when they promptly reciprocated and unfollowed me.
Of the remaining 1330, the 330 former unaccounted followers were due to several factors, including Twitter’s ongoing purge of spam accounts, some of which I may have missed, but more likely the result of my Twitter stream no longer being of particular value or interest to them.
What has this meticulous vetting of followers rendered?
I rarely get DM spam
My tweets are received by a generally interested and relevant audience, facilitating productive retweets
Allows for meaningful engagement and relationship building
The need for desktop application such as Tweetdeck is negated allowing for easy, quick access and use on any computer
I will probably hover around the 1000/990’s mark for awhile as I continue the practices that got me here and although the number may be significant statistically, it’s not important enough to abandon these principles.
I’m not sure what this all means, nor am I suggesting that my experience is the correct path, but it has enabled my Twitter experience to be rewarding, engaging and productive.
I’m @uMCLE. See you on the grid!
