The following strategy may be considered "unethical" by some, but I don't really believe so. You don't really game the system, you don't take advantage of anyone, and no one gets hurt in the process. Currently, I only have 500 followers, but it's growing daily AND I get 30-50 page views from Twitter ALONE. My followers are laser-targeted, interested in what I tweet, and click on my links. Here goes: 1. Create an account with http://tweepi.com (free). 2. Find someone in my niche (I blog about blogging) who has thousands of followers. (e.g. @copyblogger) 3. Follow one thousand people (takes between 5-10 minutes). 4. For the next few days, about 10-20% of the people I followed will follow back. 5. By the third day, I unfollow everyone who hasn't followed me back yet (using Manageflitter, free tool, takes about five minutes or less to unfollow 1000 people). 6. Repeat. A new strategy I just put into place: 1. Find someone who is in my niche, and has roughly the same amount or twice the amount of followers I do. 2. Ask them to bump my profile in a tweet (e.g. follow @JRJohnWrites for great blogging tips!), and in exchange I'll bump them in 2-3 tweets. 4. People click on the link to my profile from their tweet, and follow me because I provide value related to what they want. A few tips I'm learning along the way: 1. ALWAYS use hashtags with EVERY tweet. 2. Include a linkback to your website in the biography as well as the area for website link. 3. Build relationships. If someone ever mentions you, mention them back. The sooner, the better. 4. Don't RT/fav other people's tweets TOO much. Do it about 4-5 times a day. I consistently get 1-2 retweets per tweet, and 2-5 favs on each one - even if its linking to something else. And remember, this is with only four followers. But ALL my followers are targeted, active, and know that I provide value. Got questions? Post a reply and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. Regards, JR
Great tips for garnishing more followers on Twitter. Boost Software helped me to achieve Hootsuite Social Networking Certification and I found some good tools within the dashboard for identifying influencers, their Klout status and even after completing the certification I can say that your post gave me a couple of more ideas for building up a good community of practice. As you said, the real goal is to provide value and as long as we are maintaining that level of exchange I am sure working together to build our status and position is acceptable. Enjoyed your Tips!
I currently have 8000 followers.. lost my account for a few days because I used a "follow back automated" site. Some kind of twitter violation " If you have followed and/or unfollowed large amounts of users in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive following or follower churn)" source https://support.twitter.com/groups/56-policies-violations/topics/236-twitter-rules-policies/articles/18311-the-twitter-rules Guess I can call that a "newbie learning mistake" I do use your "I unfollow everyone who hasn't followed me back yet"
One issue not mentioned above is this: You only can follow a maximum of 2,000 if your follower to following ratio is too high of a gap. I don't fully understand it, but sometimes if you have to many followers you can't follow all of them back right away if you already following too many within a short time.
Yes, @Alyssa Lochmore is right, As per new twitter guidelines you have to maintain a ratio between following and followers.
Im trying to follow 10-15 per day, not automated, in order to avoid twitter violation.However not getting followers on facebook
You are following way too many per day mate, you should only follow a maximum of 100 per day with 500 followers. Continue to do 1k per day & you'll get your account suspended before long, if it's the first time you do only have to check a box to get the account back though. Get yourself some more accounts setup & spread the following between them. If you're going to make all the accounts in an identical niche then make sure to set them up from unique IP's & clear your cookies each time if you're using the same laptop. Setup a different Tweepi account for each one of them & if you're using any other apps make sure they all have a separate login for each Twitter account. At some point you will need to start using software if you're going to grow multiple accounts, but you should be able to manage it for a while with Tweepi. Also, when using Tweepi sort your lists by time of last tweet & only follow those that tweeted in the last day - you'll see your followback rate go up to 30-40%. If you just follow the whole list you'll follow a lot of inactive accounts in the process. The number of visitors you are getting is very good for the size of the account, so keep doing whatever it is you're doing on that front.
You're right. Just do the best you can. @jrjohn: 50 to 100 followers is a good round number -- not too many in one day.