I just wanted to post an enhancement of a technique I saw recently that is designed to attract a lot of followers. Here was the general idea that was presented: 1) Go to TwitterHolic dot com and find out who the top 30 people are by the number of followers. 2) Open their profiles and follow them. This will put you at the top of the list for the number of people following that "Twitter Rock Star". We'll use Oprah as an example. 3) Other Twitter users want to connect with people following Oprah (they assume that everone following Oprah is an Oprah fan so they want to connect with those people) so they open up Oprah's list of followers and start following. You are on the first page of that list for a little bit so you get a minimum of 5 to as many as a couple dozen followers! 4) Unfollow Oprah 5-10 minutes later and then refollow her again. You are now back at the top of her list of followers and will get more people following you again. 5) Wash/Rinse/Repeat off and on throughout the day as much as every 20 minutes. So that's the general concept. It's a great technique because you can use up far less than your 1,000 per day follow quota and still attract large number of followers. There are a few problems with it that I'm going to help you overcome. They include: 1) Refollowing Risks - this entire concept is known as "refollowing" and is a no-no in the Twitterverse. It falls under the "aggressive following" stipulation and can get you banned resulting in all your time and effort being flushed down the drain. You need to effectively hide your tracks in order to make this effective. 2) Consistency Problems - the biggest problem to making htis work is consistency. Unless you hire someone to do this for you, you run the risk that you won't do it at all in any consistent way, thus destorying it's effectiveness (esp if you are running multiple accounts). Consistency is key to making this work. I'll show you how to work around this. What you are going to do in order to overcome all obstacles is to setup a series of desktop macros to automate this for you (preferrably on a dedicated computer that is always on) which will enable you to be consistent. You'll also setup some other things to gain followers so this is not the only method you are using in order to hide your tracks. 1) Setup a Custom Browser Shortcuts - you need to setup a shortcut icon that will open a FIREFOX browser (you need to use FIREFOX as you'll see at the end) that opens the Twitter login screen. You'll also need to setup a separate shortcut that autoloads 30 separate tabs, each tab being the Twitter URL of one of the top 30 Twitter People. 2)Setup a Desktop Macros - just google "desktop macro" to find some software on this. You'll need to create at least 7 and here they are a) Twitter ID Login & Follow - This macro will open your Twitter Login/Logout Browser and will enter you username/password to login for you. Once it's done so it will launch your "Top 30 Follow" Macro. b) Twitter ID Login & Unfollow - This macro will open your Twitter Login/Logout Browser and will enter you username/password to login for you. Once it's done so it will launch your "Top 30 UnFollow" Macro. c) Twitter ID Login & RANDOM Unfollow - This macro will open your Twitter Login/Logout Browser and will enter you username/password to login for you. Once it's done so it will launch your "Random UnFollow" Macro d) Twitter ID Logout - This Macro will open your Twitter Login/Logout Broswer and log your current id out. e) Top 30 Follow - this macro will open your Top 30 Twitter People browser and will systematically click the "Follow" button on each tab then close the tab and do the same with the next person until all 30 people have been followed. Once the list is done it will launch the Twitter ID Logout Macro. f) Top 30 Unfollow - this macro will open your Top 30 Twtter People Browser and do the opposite of the previous macro...go through each one on each tab and unfollow them. Upon reaching the end of the list it launches the "Twitter ID Logout" macro to log that id out. g) Random Unfollow - this macro will open your OWN list of followers and jump to page 5, unfollow two people, jump to page 7 unfollow 2 people, jump to page 10 and unfollow 2 people, then logout. Now you are able to show that you unfollow people throughout the day other than the Top 30. Devious. 3) Setup Your Own Custom Schedule - Let's say you want to do a follow run every hour forever. Here's how you would setup the schedule: 1:00 pm - Run Your Twitter ID Login & Follow Macro - it would log you into your account and do your follow run, then log out. 1:30 pm - Run your Twitter ID Login & Unfollow Macro - it would log you into your account and do your unfollow run, then log out. 1:45 pm - Run your Twitter ID Login & RANDOM Unfollow - it would login and randomly unfollow people on pages 5, 7, and 10 of your following list. Wash/rinse/repeat at 2:00/2:30/2:45, 3:00/3:30/3:45, 4:00/4:30/4:45 etc. so that it's going around the clock. You can easily average 5 new followers per Top 30 ID on each run (150 per run x 12 runs pre day = 1800) , but you are only using up 12 of your 1,000 follower quota each day. That leaves a lot of following for you yet to do! 4) Mask Your Tracks - here's how you make sure that the Twitter Police doesn't see you as doing this and only this method for which they'll put youu in the Twitter Time-Out. a) Do NOT AutoFollow in return - sorry if this breaks the ettiquite thing, but you cannot turn this on using any 3rd party service! If you attract 1,800 people per day using this main method then you would quickly burn through your daily follow quota if you auto-follow-back and not be able to mask your tracks by using other following methods! b) Twollo - this is a free auto-following service. It's not super reliable, but it is free. Setup some searches here that hunt for terms like "Facebook", "hate", "love", "cell", "dog", "cat" and other common words (hint, you might want to use TARGETED terms here if you are trying to niche your account). It will find people that Tweet these terms and follow a certain percentage of them. Another version of this is Twollow <<< notice the "w" which deoes the same thing but limits the # of searches you can have running at any given time. Personally, I use EasyTweetsPro (yes my affiliate link) to do this autofollowing because it's fare more reliable...but it's not free. You can setup a few searches at each one if you want so the API is being access by different providers in order to further hide your trail. So now your account shows you attracting followers using a method other than our main "Top 30" technique. c) Unfollow Your Dead Weight - use a tool like Twitter Karma(unreliable), FlashTweet(semi-reliable but slightly dangerous), or Hummingbird (my favorite) in order to unfollow the people who have not reciprocated on your follow. You now show you unfollow in more ways than one. d) Your Twitter Presence - should have put this first! Setup a profile with picture, bio, link, and CUSTOM background BEFORE turning on this autofollowing machine. ALSO, use a service like TwitterFeed(not so good - multiposts, TwitterFeed Footprint), or Hootsute(Better - still multiposts, still has footprint, but will also incorporate Adsense for revenue), EasyTweetsPro(Best - no footprint, doesn't multipost), to stuff RSS feeds into your Tweet stream and generate an active Twitter Presence. You can find plenty of Blog feeds relating to your niche at Alltop. Set these things up at LEAST one day before setting up any autofollowing systems so you have a "real" Twitter ID and not a "spam" id if you get visually inspected. Ta-daaaa! You can now attract thousands of people every day regardless fo the 1,000 Follows per day stipluation. Takes time to setup, but these IDs shouldn't get pulled down if you are Tweeting enough. To take it to the next level you just need to duplicate this for multiple accounts. The only thing you really need to do is create custom versions of your Twitter ID Login & Follow as well as your Twitter ID Login & Unfollow macros and have them running at different times. If you want to get even MORE fancy on masking tracks, you find yourself a good list of proxies. You install FoxyProxy in Firefox (told you to use Firefox at the beginning of this) and load up your proxies. You then make a note (in excel or whatever) which proxie belongs to which Twitter account. You then edit your Twitter ID & Login macro to first open FoxyProxy settings and select the appropriate Proxy for that account before executing the login. That way each account will always be doing your Top 30 follow runs from a different IP address (as it's all done through your browser)from your other accounts, but it will consistently be using the SAME IP for each account. Snazzy, right? Hope you like it I foind it somewhere googling, took me lots of time) Thanks.
Wouldn't this trigger twitter's spam flag? I mean, won't my account be suspended if I use this method?
This will definitely result in your account being suspended, and if they realize the extent of your activities you probably will not get it back with a simple apology letter. From my perspective it looks like it will also just result in a lot of junk follows. I want targeted followers that are interested in what I tweet about, not a bunch of random people who follow these celebrity accounts. I also disagree with your plan of random unfollowing. I follow everyone back and keep them in my list as long as they are a follower. Random unfollowing would eventually hit the people who are interacting with me via comments, favorites and retweets. Why would I alienate my followers in this manner? In short, this entire strategy is very spammy and shouldn't be endorsed.
I like the tactic! But don't over-do it by unfollowing after less than an hour! I would say, follow the top 100, and unfollow 3 of them every day starting two days from the moment you followed them. After some time you will follow 50 or so of them. At that moment start re-following them with 10 a day. Maybe takes some longer, but it sure is a good strategy! Of course, you want targeted followers. But if you have a big amount of followers, new ones will see that and you(r brand) will look more respectable --> More followers --> More sharing --> Reaching the in first-place intended audience in bigger amounts.