Mass Following Whilst Avoiding Suspension

Hi, I have sent you this message also in a private conversation, but since I'm new here I don't know how that works so just to be safe I'll post it over here as well.

Hi,

I'm getting REALLY annoyed and reading your article I'm sure that you know a lot more about this than I do.
Well I have a twitter account, I've been slowly building followers because twitter keeps on suspending it, almost every day. And then it takes days to unsuspend it.
I don't know what to do anymore, they say every time that it's because I'm demonstrating a pattern of aggressive following behavior but I'm not!
For example 3 days ago it got suspended and it took them 36 hours to unsuspend it.
When they did, I started using it normally, following MAYBE 5 accounts. And after THREE hours they suspended it again!!!
How can following 5 people be an aggressive following behavior?
Since then, it's been unsuspended...I've followed around 20-30 people in the last 2 days and now it's been suspended again!!
I have around 5000 followers by the way, and I'm following around 650-700 accounts.

What should I do? I've tried dozens of times asking to the support to be able to actually TALK with someone instead of the automated email but nothing worked.

I don't know what to do anymore, my account is pretty much impossible to use. I have never used any program or script and I have always followed manually.
Now I can't even follow 10-20 people in one day without being suspended for 2 days, how am I supposed to use this account anymore?

Do you know anything I could do that might help?

Thanks!

 

Sergio_di_rio , I really cannot explain why you got suspended in you examples. I just can guess that after you got suspended in a first time, you are now being monitored by Twitter and treated in a "special" way.
When you got unsuspended, did you receive any explanation from Twitter?
Also check if you not granted access to some app that does still automated following or in following. May be revoke access to your account for all apps.
And also you can post your question on twitter forum/blog and you might get answers there.

 

I never used any app or anything, and this started happening right from the get go.
Everytime I get suspended, I send the usual ticket, then i wait for some hours (days), and they send me ALWAYS THE SAME automated email saying that my "account was indeed suspended because it demonstrated a pattern of aggressive following behavior" even though, as I explained, that's not possible. After that, I have to wait again some hours for it to be unsuspended and start working properly again.
I have never used any app or services so this is just ridiculous.

Thank you anyways for your answer, where did you say that I should post my question too? Thanks!

 

https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/rules-policies

 

The only apps you probably want are those that allow you to use your phone to access Twitter, and the likes of justunfollow.com and/or unfollowers.me - and then avoid touching any of the red unfollow buttons - instead actually go on the Twitter account of the person who has unfollowed you and block them, and if any have unfollowed over, say, 100, report them for spam. When using justunfollow to unfollow inactive accounts, never unfollow unless they have been inactive for at least 6+ months, otherwise there is a higher risk of getting unfollowed back by them. Never use apps like manageflitter etc, they use automated unfollowing, and will cause you to get banned very quickly. If you are currently following only 700 accounts and were following near 5000, then that means you've unfollowed 4300, and for that bad an offense, Twitter is probably punishing you pretty hard anyway, and probably will restrict you hard for the next few weeks. Best to have a 3 to 6 week holiday from Twitter - by then they will probably have eased the restrictions somewhat.

 

I would recommend you leave twitterfollowersbot dot com severely alone! All that thing does is get you fake followers and bots - not real people - it could get you a red flag when you least expect.

 

EddieC,

1. Do you follow your daily follows all at once, one after the other rapid fire, or do you space it out throughout the day? If you space it out, how many minutes do you wait between each follow?

2. How many UNfollows can you do per day? Does this amount change based on how many you are following / being followed by?

Thank you.

 

Absolutely never do more than 100 unfollows in a day (exceed 100, and a ban is extremely likely), preferably much less, and if you must unfollow someone who is following you, the best way to avoid getting caught by unfollowback is to only unfollow those followers that have not tweeted in the last 6 months - to find that, use justunfollow.com and that has an option to find out which tweeters have not tweeted in the last 1, 3 or 6 months - the 6 month option is best, because many that have tweeted in the last 6 months but not in the last 1 or 3, will come back to twitter, whereas those who have not tweeted in the last 6 months are very unlikely to return to the site.

 

Which sites are you using to monetize your Twitter accounts? Websites like Mylikes.com, Sponsoredtweets.com or posting aff links from Amazon?

 

Replied to

Reply - Doing things like that is thought to be spam, which would result in almost certain suspension.

 

Hi EddieC, this article s really helpful.. Could you please share with me the script for unfollowing those who haven't tweeted for the past 3 days? How do I get the list of those people who haven't tweeted for past 3 days?

Thanks in advance..

 

Eddie,

Thanks so much for you original post. It is extremely helpful. I have about 40 accounts that I manage, though I don't try to make any money. I would love to hear what you have found concerning twitter new follow and unfollow limits. How much different are they now from what you first posted?

If anyone else has this information, please respond or email me at

Thanks!!

 

Hi all,

Sorry for not keeping this thread updated for a while, have been incredibly busy. Twitter's algorithm seems to have got a lot more complex than when I wrote the OP, and as such it is difficult to know exactly how far the limits can be pushed.

The one thing I've noticed is that as well as taking into account how many tweets your account is making, Twitter now also look at the interaction levels of those tweets. I did some split testing across accounts with similar stats but different interaction levels, I was able to follow almost twice as many people on the accounts with a high number of replies & retweets without picking up any suspensions.

I'm still working out exactly how far the limits can be pushed, but for now it seems to be safe if you start off following 10 per day on a new account until you reach 100 followers, then up it to 20 per day until you hit 500, then follow 5% of your number of followers each day after that. As long as you churn out five tweets per day minimum these numbers seem to work regardless of interaction levels, if you get a good number of replies & retweets you can probably increase your following rate a bit.

 

First post. This is a great thread. eddieC, do you have anymore progress in your research?

 

I am in the same boat as what is being discussed, I have been trying to establish a social media presence to build my brand. I was going to be ethical and follow those who may find my content interesting. I see it as trying to develop a rapport with the user and follow them on Twitter, I find that I want to grow my followers but I have no plan in place and I feel like I am out of control as I have started with just facebook and now have a wide range of social media accounts for my brand Mogwai Design and for me personally Chris Paris-Haines.

Let me elaborate there is a time when I used social media for social and was not in the game for the financial gain which social media can bring in as an honest living living ethically.

I am a freelance web designer and I am using Social Media for the benefit of my business. I am concerned that my social and full time working for an employer unrelated to my passion as web designer being my own boss.

I have built up a following on twitter of 1200 people. This has been over a 3 month perriod and it is only just this week that I have started to get some interest into my brand. My goals are simple I want to help people get on social media for business but I have too many accounts already which I am struggling to manage.

Is there any free alternatives to the paid services for use with social media which don't come across as spamming but I want some control over engagement with the following and fans etc as social media has so many options. I am suffering from information overload and have completely lost what I am doing and am not getting any business! Help please some advice would be much appreciated!

 

As other posts have stated, if you don't do this carefully, you will get suspended. The primary objective and key to not getting suspended is to follow people who won't report you for abuse. So you need to find users who are interested in what's known as follow4follow (F4f). There are several user communities that are interested in growing their number of followers rapidly by employing the follow4follow strategy. So, how do you find them?

You can search for tweets with certain hashtags like: #f4f, #follow4follow, #followtrain, etc. You can also engage in a community of users called a Fandom. These are users who follow a particular pop star or sport team or some other area of interest. You can find these users by searching for relevant keywords.

To conduct the searching effectively, I'd recommend an app like Myne (http://www.saviapps.com/myne/) or Fandom Link (http://www.saviapps.com/fandomlink/)