One of the tasks I get my outsourcer to do is to build Twitter followers by following others. It’s a simple strategy whereby you search Twitter for people active in your niche who have a large number of followers and then you follow their followers. Twitter then notifies the people you have followed and they will then check you out and if what you have been Tweeting about is of interest to them they will follow you back.
There are a couple of disadvantages however, the first being it takes time to do, however this is why having an outsourcer to do this sort of activity makes sense. The second is Twitter has several rules that prevent you following more than 5,000 unless you already have a large following.
Below is a copy of the rules they have in place around followers.
- Every account can follow 5,000 users total. Once you’ve followed 5,000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow. This number is different for each account and is based on your ratio of followers to following; this ratio is not published. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter and everyone is subject to limits, even high profile and API accounts.
- Every Twitter account is technically unable to follow more than 1,000 users per day, in addition to the account-based limits above. Please note that this is just a technical limit to prevent egregious abuse from spam accounts.
- Accounts are also prohibited from aggressively following other users. Our Follow Limits and Best Practices Page has more information on Twitter’s following rules.
- If you've reached the account-based follow limit (5,000 users), you’ll need to wait until you yourself have more followers before you can follow additional users. Follow limits are system-wide; Support cannot remove or adjust your follow limits.
- To follow one or two additional users, unfollow a few accounts you're currently following. Please note, however, that regularly following and unfollowing many accounts at a time is a violation of the Twitter Rules and can result in account suspension.
To work around the problem, you need to start removing fake accounts and those you have followed who have not followed you back.
You can work out how many fake accounts you have by using www.twitteraudit.com, unfortunately it doesn’t tell who the fake followers are however the program flags accounts as fake if they have a low number of tweets, have not tweeted in a while and has a high follower ratio.
To highlights accounts who have not followed you back take a look at www.manageflitter.com which is a Twitter Management service designed to grow your followers and optimise your use of Twitter. There is a limited free service available, and access to the full features set costs $49 per month.
Other services which are worth looking at include:
| www.adretweet.com | This is a Twitter marketplace where you can buy retweets, comments, followers, favourites, and sponsored tweets for around $6. |
| www.howdoigetfollowers.net | A service where you can buy Twitter followers and retweets, Instagram followers and likes, Facebook fans and likes, and YouTube video views and likes. Prices start from $27 for a basic package. |
| www.tweetdeck.com | A free Twitter dashboard that makes managing your Twitter account easier. |
| www.twellow.com | A free service that makes light work of finding Twitter accounts to follow via relevant business categories or in your geographical area. |
| www.twitaholic.com | A free service that scans Twitter regularly to determine who has the most followers. |
| www.twitdom.com | This is a directory of over 2,000 Twitter applications. |
| www.twuffer.com | A tweeting service that allows you to queue up tweets and schedule when they are posted. The free service allows 50 tweets per month, the unlimited service is $5.99 per month. |
If you come across other Twitter services that are worth a mention please let me know and I’ll update the post.
