What to do About Twitter Non-Followers

by Emily Wenstrom
published in Community

In my last column, I talked about using the follow-back practice to build a following. In this one, we’ll look at what you should do when others don’t follow you back.

As a quick recap, so we’re all moving forward from the same understanding: The follow-back strategy is based on the Twitter etiquette that if someone follows you, you should follow them back, regardless of who they are. This is not a universal practice (I’m among many Twitter users who don’t subscribe to it, as a general rule), but it’s a common one.

This tactic can help you quickly grow your following, but it can also mean artificially inflating your follow stats with individuals who don’t know who you are and won’t spend enough time looking at your profile to find out. I recommend using this tactic very selectively—check out last month’s post for more details.

But when you use this tactic, what should you do about users who don’t follow you back?  It’s an important point to address, as it can be a real problem.

What’s the Big Deal?

Generally, I’d say not to waste a second thought on a user who doesn’t follow you back. There’s still hypothetically an opportunity to build a relationship over time, if you engage those you follow regularly.

But Twitter uses an algorithm that limits how many people you can follow, based on how many followers you already have. I haven’t found any exact numbers on what those limits are, but they do indeed exist—I’ve hit them before myself.

What’s the big deal? When you following large numbers of people, some don’t follow you back, and those numbers accumulate over time. That means that at some point, you won’t be able to follow any more people—and thus lose some control over your platform’s growth.

What to Do About It

There’s two ways to respond to hitting your following limit. One, you could just wait it out until you’ve got enough new followers added to keep going. Two, you unfollow people who didn’t follow you back, so you can make room for new, potentially more engaged, follows.

The latter, of course, is the more proactive approach. And we like proactive.

How to Un-follow

You could, of course, plow your way through all the users you follow, check to see if they followed you back, and go from there. But that’s time-consuming and tedious. Luckily, there’s some tools out there designed specifically to help you identify and unfollow these individuals.

In fact, more than it makes any sense to list here. But here’s a few options that are both free and helpful:

Who to Un-follow

Don’t blindly unfollow every single account that doesn’t follow you back—there are some cases where there is still value to you to follow an account that doesn’t follow you.

This includes thought leaders and experts in your field, leading authors in your genre or other celebrities, relevant publications, and other influencers. People in these groups likely tweet information that is valuable for your own reference, and for retweeting to share with your own following—but who may have too big a following for them to justify following back every single person.

People who are good for unfollowing are marketing/promotional accounts for companies or tools, people who tweet about things that are not relevant to your platform, and generally, people you do not know in any capacity. These are people who aren’t adding value to your feed, and likely you wouldn’t add to theirs either. No hard feelings—unfollow and move on.

Keep Your Platform on Track

There is a time and a place for the follow-back approach. Whether you use it or not, don’t let Twitter’s follow limits hold back your progress. Take advantage of these tips and tools to keep your platform growth on track.


ew_007_lowrezBy day, Emily Wenstrom, is the editor of short story website wordhausauthor social media coach, and freelance content marketing specialist. By early-early morning, she is E. J. Wenstrom, an award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author whose debut novel Mud was named 2016 Book of the Year by the Florida Writers Association.

 

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