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!
UPDATE: The auto-follow statistics are even more extreme as I forgot about another email address that contained over 1,400 notifications of new followers.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great and informative article! Love the graphics!
Thanks! It’s been a meaningful and rewarding Twitter journey.
Along the way, I’ve also discovered that graphics play a huge role in the presentation, appeal and readability of a blog post. I love the creative process although I spend way too much time on the concept and development of graphics. A great resource for creating graphs and charts to place on website and blogs is http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createAgraph
It is the correct approach. I did the exact same thing as you in terms of unfollowing everyone who had stopped tweeting or who simply did not interest me. I got to around 980 and I have vowed to always stay under 1000. It is so nice now to look at my friends column and actually have a real interest in what every person (including you, I might add) has to say. No more crap!!! I do not care how many people follow me as it is quality not quantity that matters.
@danharris
Dan, thanks so much for taking the time to check out this post and comment.
Would love to keep my following count under 750 but don’t know how realistic that is as there are so many solid folks out there that I can soak up, learn from and communicate with. I access Twitter via the web almost exclusively and only use apps when on my mobile. And this is only possible because I keep the following count manageable. Like you said, it’s so nice to actually have an interest in what all of those you follow, your friends, have to say.
Tim -
Nice approach. You clearly put more effort into culling your list of followers. I would go a step further and say that the number of followers and who they are not that important.
Unlike symmetrical platforms like Facebook, the follower/follow relationship in Twitter is asymmetrical. (Except for the foolish people with auto-follow/auto-unfollow tools).
Personally, I don’t bother blocking followers unless they have offensive picture or post obviously offensive material. I don’t want someone looking at my followers list to see that. Followers can’t send me a DM and don’t end up in my feed unless I follow them.
For me the focus is on the people I follow, regardless of whether they follow back. I find the new list feature a great way to filter the twitter feed into my different areas of interest. If in a compliance mood, I go to my compliance list, if I’m in a privacy mood, I go to my privacy list, etc.
That following list is in flux. I keep that focused on people that I have relationships with or post good information. Too much useless drivel and they get unfollowed.
Thanks for your kind words, comment and insight, Doug!
I’ve paid unusual attention to followers not only to optimize my Twitter experience but also as a quasi-experiment to gain an insight so that I can address inquiries about my use of this platform in as authentic a way as possible. But with around 2100 followers over seven months (whittled down to 1000) for a “manageable” average of 10/day, I’ve also done it because I could. Finally, I’ve done it as a courtesy (and some intrigue) to those that found me interesting or relevant enough to follow. But, if I, um, win an Oscar for acting like a blogger and my follower count explodes, I’d have to largely abandon some of these practices
I totally agree with you that Twitter is asymmetrical (I argued this “fair exchange of information?” point in my “Mass Unfollow” post several months ago). There are many that I follow who will find the primary subject matter of my stream less than useful and I would hate to think I’m burdening them with an expectation of an auto-follow. I just hope that those I don’t follow back afford me the same consideration
I absolutely love the new List feature, also. It’s a game changer and couldn’t agree more with your thoughts and use of it.
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