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Twitter experts... Unfollowing thousands?

by Eric Lorence
11 replies
I've noticed a few not so well known marketers now in the 20-30k followers range, suddenly unfollowing most of their Twitter "friends", and now only following a few hundred or so.

Is this some kind of strategy to increase popularity? Does it work?

What's the point?
#experts #thousands #twitter #unfollowing
  • Profile picture of the author ltdraper
    Your Twitter Grade will be better since they take your ratio of following to followed by into account. Or perhaps they're just wanting to clean up their twitter stream.

    I would think most of the people that were following them did so via auto-follow back and will unfollow them automatically as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author emorrow23
    Originally Posted by Eric Lorence View Post

    I've noticed a few not so well known marketers now in the 20-30k followers range, suddenly unfollowing most of their Twitter "friends", and now only following a few hundred or so.

    Is this some kind of strategy to increase popularity? Does it work?

    What's the point?
    There is a certain following to follower ratio that needs to be kept otherwise you cannot follow more people.

    Example... If you are following 5k people and only 200 are following you back, you cannot continue following more people with out getting more followers.

    So they are most likely unfollowing people so they can start following MORE new people.

    Plus it makes the twitter account look more popular.
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  • Profile picture of the author CurtisN
    The point is that the vast majority of their followers provide no value to them. Twitter is a social site...not a marketing site. There are virtually no reasons to follow everybody who follows you back.

    No, it is not some twisted strategy to do anything. IMHO, they just got sick of the noise and the affiliate link spammers and wanted to follow only those they knew personally or have done business with in the past.
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    • Profile picture of the author Eric Lorence
      I understand all these good points, just seems a little extreme to unfollow 10k or more in one batch, just seems like a strategy.

      If it was just about relationships, this would be an ongoing process I would think.

      Thanks for the replies...
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      • Profile picture of the author M Thompson
        Originally Posted by Eric Lorence View Post

        I understand all these good points, just seems a little extreme to unfollow 10k or more in one batch, just seems like a strategy.

        If it was just about relationships, this would be an ongoing process I would think.

        Thanks for the replies...

        It depends there could be two things going on here...



        1. They are using an auto follow tool.

        Once you follow lots of people you go back and unfollow anyone who hasn't followed you. This then allows you to then follow a lot more. You do get a bit of a problem because you tend to have a 1:1 ratio.

        If you then unfollow a few thousand followers you can then add a few thousand more in one hit.

        2. They are actually being sensible!

        with thousands of followers you get a twet stream that is impossible to follow . it's quite simple to get a tool written that will unfollow peopl who don't interact with you. They could be doing this.

        I really only want to read tweets from 2 types of people.. those who inspire me, and those who I like to interact with. I have no need to read the reams of spam that people like to post 24/7
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  • Profile picture of the author RGallowitz
    If you unfollow thousands of people in a few days your Twitter account will get suspended within that week. Massive purging is against the Twitter TOS and they will hammer down on you faster than you can tweet.
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  • Profile picture of the author dsmpublishing
    When you look at the celebs on twitter they will say follow 200 and have 100k followers. The idea is that they want to look more popular that what they actually are. It will make new followers think they are someone amazing as many follow the rule if they dont follow you unfollow them.

    I tend to avoid these people will very few following as they tend to just promote, promote, promote without any kind of interaction and it just looks awful.

    sam
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  • Profile picture of the author Gary Jinks
    There is a trend at the moment amongst pro Twitter users. I've read a number of posts on their blogs about this very thing in the last couple of weeks.

    They claim it's to cut down on the noise and to allow them to concentrate on followers that they have actual relationships with. I have a more sceptical view. I believe them....sort of. Their simply mass purging and in the process giving themselves a false image of 'guru-ness' for a while. That ratio will even back out over the month as they add like crazy before they do it again.

    I think you network on Twitter in one of two ways (when it comes to followers). You either play the numbers game or you focus on a smaller group intensely. You can't do both gurus!

    Gary
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    • Profile picture of the author Eric Lorence
      Here's a couple observations about Twitter traffic...

      I do my follow backs about once a week across all my accounts due to time constraints.

      After the follows, traffic will get a "jolt" for a few days then die down again.
      These follows will be from "twitter/home" or "Twitter/soandso" (sidebars I guess).

      When adding Tweets, the traffic comes from the "Twitter/statuses" page (timeline?)

      They have an algo that seems to reward follows more than tweets by putting your icon on the sidebar more often for follows.

      Interesting statistic...
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  • Profile picture of the author Harry Behrens
    If I were to do something like this, barring any outside influence from Twitter itself, it would be purely to make my better followers feel more valuable... followers/subscribers who feel valuable are more likely to listen and act on what you tell them.

    So I guess a strategy COULD be to follow thousands of spammer/bot twitter streams as well as my real followers, then make a point to let the real ones know when I'm unfollowing all the spam in favor of them... maybe.

    I wouldn't actually do this myself, but it's a possibility. I know there's always people who play with numbers and perceptions like that.
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