How do I follow more people on Twitter?

[danatanseo]

Hi my Moz friends,

I like following all of you, a lot! Because I like following you all so much, but not so many of you like following ME, I have been cut off by Twitter and I'm not allowed to follow any more people until I have more people following ME.

Sad Face

I am sure that more than a few of you have been in this scenario. What should I do? I could dump 10-20 followers but that 's not going to be enough to pacify the Twitter Gods!

Thanks guys,

Dana

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Dana,

You need to probably flush out a load of your inactive users (which you can do using tools like Sprout Social or Tweepi). Looking at your current following I would say it needs to go down by a few hundred really.

Once you've done that give it a while and then you can start adding people - but do it in small chunks at a time.

Matt

[NHA_DistanceLearning]

Hi Dana,

I don't  know if you are, but don't send automated DM messages to new followers on twitter. Many people don't like that, especially not when that automated DM contains links. There's a big chance that your newly acquired follower will get discouraged from reading anything on your timeline rightaway and will unfollow you.

EDIT: I see you are actively engaging in conversation, so that's a good thing. Then the following comes to mind: are you following the 'right' people? If there are a lot of people who won't follow you back, they might not belong to your target audience.

[danatanseo]

Thanks so much Bas and Mathew for your responses. Yes, these are all things that I have tried so far, but as of yet, it doesn't seem to matter how many people I "infollow" I still cannot follow more.

Could it be that I need to separate "danatanseo" from "danatan-the-plain-old-human-being-that-talks-about-her-kids" into two separate Tiotter account?

[NHA_DistanceLearning]

You're most welcome, Dana.

In my experience, it doesn't have to be all business, not even on a company account. But do try to not stray too far away from what your target audience wants to read. For example, A humorous tweet (funny picture, quirky quote, etc) about SEO or online marketing-related matters is bound to make people chuckle and might invoke that 'she's a real person and not a link-posting engine' feeling. A click on the 'follow' button won't be far away at that moment. More personal things like talking about your kids might appeal to some people (who are parents themselves), but the ones wanting to follow you purely for business related matters might not feel motivated enough to actually follow you. Making a separate, more personal twitter account could be worth the effort, in that case.

[DougRoberts]

Hi Dana, I found this article which might be of interest while I was looking for an answer for you:

http://blog.tweetsmarter.com/followers/how-users-break-twitters-following-rules-and-get-away-with-it/

This paragraph caught my eye:

"Twitter helps make this hard to do by preventing users from following more than 10% that follow them, once a user follows 2,000 or more. So if 2,000 follow you, you can follow up to 2,200; if 10,000 follow you, you can follow up to 11,000, and so forth."

Looks like you just hit the 2000 barrier...

Doug (Yes, I'm following!)

[danatanseo]

Thumbs up and thanks to all three of you for the tips. I am going to use Followerwonk to evaluate who I should keep following and who I can stop following.

Bas made a good point about the DM. I used to write a personal thank you to everyone who followed me, until that became too overwhelming. Then I tried setting up an automated response in IFTT...which I think I disconnected a while ago, but I am going to check to see if maybe it's still active. Perhaps it is and that could maybe be hurting the "happiness level" of new followers.

Thanks guys!

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Dana,

I was going through some older questions and noticed this one. What did you end up doing, and is it working for you like you'd like?

[danatanseo]

Hi Keri,

I did actually end up using Followerwonk to sort through my followers and decide on some that weren't quite relevant to my (or my other Followers') interests. Some of them ended up being people who had obviously only followed me in order to get me to follow them back...and then once I did they dumped following me like a hot potato, lol! I ended up maxing out the number of people I could "unfollow" in one day on Twitter...I seem to be hitting barricades no matter what I do, lol. Anyway, I was able to make plenty of room now so I can now follow people I really AM interested in without fear of hitting the 2,000 limit any time soon. Thanks Followerwonk!