I am not selling anything. This is not a gimmick and will require some effort on your part. My only goals & motivations are these: I honestly like helping people, I like figuring stuff out, I like sharing stuff that I feel has significant value to others and of course I like visitor traffic to my website for the sake of simply getting more visitor traffic without trying to pitch or sell you anything. This technical method/strategy of getting Twitter followers is only for people interested in getting lots of Twitter followers for the sake of simply getting a high number of Twitter followers for fun or getting exposure for a product or service that you offer if that is what your goal is. If you are only looking for Twitter followers in your particular niche or interests then this information is not for you, but overall I think the benefit of getting more Twitter followers increases your overall exposure/image. If you feel that following back somehow takes away from your image/appearance then I believe that is a false perception. To me following back shows that you are not a self-important person and that you have a “give and take” attitude.
Update: 2-20-2017: Managing our Twitter account is becoming too time consuming. We will continue to followback when time permits and also add folks to Lists when time permits.
Note: On October 1, 2016 I had around 200 followers. I created my Twitter account in 2009, but had not done anything with it in years. So I decided to figure out the best methods to get some followers. I tried a lot of different things that didn’t work very well and eventually figured out the 2 methods below that work great. I’m now up to 16K followers after 4 months of actually putting in a reasonable amount of time and effort to get followers. I’m sure it is possible to get 10K followers per month if you put in the time and effort required to achieve that. What I like most about the whole following/follower Twitter thing is that it is a win-win thing for everyone. 😉
How to get maximum followers per day – requires more time and effort
Use the Twitter List Followback Strategy and the Leap Frog Strategy.
How to get a significant number of followers per day quickly with minimal time and effort
Use the Twitter List Followback Strategy.
Twitter List Followback Strategy Technical Details|Method
Using Twitter Lists to Follow people and get followed back:
A much faster, more efficient and less time consuming method to get Followers is simply to follow X number of Twitter accounts in a Twitter List. I have created several Twitter Lists that contain 15,000+ people who will follow you back if you follow them first. I have also subscribed to other people’s Twitter Lists and am using those other Twitter Lists in the Twitter List Followback Strategy that I am using below.
Twitter List Followback Strategy Technical Details:
Go to the Lists link (to the right of the Likes link) in my Twitter account profile or anyone else’s Twitter account profile. Example: https://twitter.com/BPSPro/lists Open a Twitter List, click on the List Members link and follow 500 Twitter accounts (see Notes below). It should only take about 15 minutes to follow 500 people in a Twitter List. Then wait 3-5 days to get followbacks from the people you followed in the Twitter List. What I have found is that typically you will get 100 to 250 followbacks the first day and then you will continue to get followbacks for a few days, but the total number of followbacks will decrease after the first day. Example: 200 followbacks the first day, 100 followbacks on day 2, 80 followbacks on day 3…(see images below – “Twitter List Strategy Results“) After 3-5 days you can unfollow all the people you followed that did not follow you back (see the Recommended Twitter Management Tool section for a great Twitter management tool that makes this quick and simple to do). Then repeat the process again every 3-5 days.
Leap Frog Strategy
When you get a new Follower that is obviously actively interested in getting maximum followbacks, wait 12-24 hours then go to their Twitter Account > click on their Followers link and follow the last people who followed them. If they are active then you will see several new followers listed ahead of your Twitter account. So that means all of those people followed in the last 12-24 hours. 😉 You can continue to do the same thing for any other new Followers that just followed you. The logic is that that last people who followed that person are currently active and looking for followbacks. So you should get a followback almost right away. Example: follow 500 people on a List on day 1, do the Leap Frog Strategy on day 2 and 3. At the end of day 5, unfollow anyone that does not follow you back. Then repeat the process. Notes: Obviously if someone has a higher number of followers then you will see a higher number of people to follow on that person’s Followers page and you will get a higher number of followbacks. You can be selective about who you follow first by taking a quick look at their Twitter account/Tweets or just follow anyone on that person’s Followers page.
Recommended Twitter Management Tool:
Unfollowspy: www.unfollowspy.com
“Twitter management tool for seeing who follows, unfollows, locate people who dont follow back and much more.”
I am not affiliated with Unfollowspy, this is not an affiliate link and I do not get any kickbacks from them. I have tried a few Twitter Management tools and I liked this one the best because it is very simple to use and if you want to get the paid/Pro version then it is very cheap compared to other Twitter Management tools that I tried/tested. Unfollowspy offers a free version/service/tool, but is has limitations of course. Anyway it makes managing your Twitter account quick and easy to do with minimal time involved. You can quickly unfollow people who do not follow you back, check who unfollowed, check if you missed following someone back and follow them, etc etc etc.
Notes:
IMPORTANT: There is Twitter Limit ratio of Followers to Following after you have reached 5,000 Followers, which is 10%. Example: If you have 5,000 Followers then you can only follow up to 500 more people than you your total number of Followers, which would be Following: 5500 vs Followers: 5000. If you have 10,000 Followers then you can follow up to 1,000 more people than you your total number of Followers. You will not be allowed to follow anyone else if you hit the maximum Limit ratio of Following to Followers until you get more Followers so that the ratio is back to the 10% Limit ratio of Following to Followers. So let’s say you have 5000 Followers and you are Following 5500. If 10 of the people you followed first follow you back then your total number of Followers would be 5010, which means you could follow 1 new person back. So you want to keep your ratio of Following to Followers below the Twitter 10% Limit ratio so that you are able to follow new followers back. Or you could unfollow some of the people you followed first from a Twitter List to get your ratio below 10% so that you can follow new people who follow you first. The ratio is 10 to 1 so if you wanted to be allowed to follow 10 more new followers, you would need to unfollow 100 people that you followed first on a Twitter List.
You can subscribe to a Twitter List in someone else’s Twitter account profile and the List will show up under your Twitter Profile Lists link.
The maximum number of people you can follow per day is 1,000 (this is now 400). So if you want to follow more than 500 people on a Twitter List then the maximum number of people you should follow is probably 800 per day. Since the new max is 400 follows per day then you should only follow “first” up to 300 people per day. The reason for that is if new people follow you and you are maxed out on following back for the day then you will not be able to follow anyone back for 12-24 hours. So you want to leave yourself a “buffer” so that you can follow new people back instead of doing something like following 1,000 400 people on a Twitter List per day.
In my particular case I am retweeting the Lists that I created in the hopes that people will realize that Twitter Lists are much more efficient at showing appreciation to followers who follow you back and is a way to thank everyone who follows you. The problem with retweeting tweets that only contain up to 10 people in those tweets is that that method is very limited and if you retweeted every single tweet to show appreciation to people who followback then you would be spending all day retweeting tweets. So by retweeting a List you can thank everyone all at once and in a permanent and ongoing way.
You can use Twitter Tools like the Twitter Dashboard or Twitter TweetDeck to be able to control and view accounts and Tweets, but Lists are awesome for doing something like this – Let’s say you have 1,000’s of Followers and you have 10 people that you do not want to miss any Tweets by those 10 people. If you add those 10 people to a List that you create then you can monitor only those 10 people’s Tweets by viewing the Twitter Stream in that particular List.
You should continue to check your Twitter account daily for any new followers and follow them back. You can also use a combination of the Twitter List strategy above and the older Twitter Followback strategy below.
Let people know you followback. I recommend adding something like “I followback” under your Twitter Profile. Works for me. 😉 You should especially add that if you have less than 1,000 followers. Getting to 1,000 followers is tough because people may not think you are serious about getting followers and following back. You can remove that later on once you get a significant number of followers because it will be obvious that you follow back. 😉 Once you hit a 3,000 following to followers ratio it is pretty much smooth sailing after that.
If you don’t like someone’s Tweets you can Mute their Tweets instead of unfollowing them. By doing that you can continue to followback and keep a follower without having to see the Tweets from a particular person in your Twitter Stream. If you don’t like my Tweets Mute me. I unfollow people that don’t follow me back with Unfollowspy, which I think is what most people do also. That is not personal and is instead logical since I want to maintain a relative ratio of Following to Followers. What I tweet/retweet is high value followback tweets that have users that will followback and some occaisonal tweets that I find cute, funny, informational or other stuff that I find fun/funny/cool that I think other people will enjoy.
Follow first instead of waiting for people to follow you. As you build up a high number of followers there will be increasing numbers of people who follow you first if they see that you followback, but what has been working great for me is to follow Twitter users first who look like a good gamble that will probably follow me back. When I do a comparison of being followed first from a Tweet that has my Twitter account in it, the number of followers from that Tweet is relatively low vs when I follow first and wait for a followback. I’m pretty sure that is because most people just Retweet Tweets and do not follow anyone in a Tweet. Example: If I track down 100 people that look like a good gamble and follow those 100 people first then most likely 90 of them will follow me back. If on the other hand a Tweet where my Twitter account is listed in that Tweet and it is being Retweeted to 1,000’s of people and I wait for people to follow me first, then probably only 30 people will follow me first from that Tweet.
Follow first and be patient. Give someone at least 24 hours to follow you back. 3-5 days is probably the best amount of time to wait for someone to follow you back. That gives someone enough time to see that you followed them and to follow you back. If someone does not follow you back in 3-5 days that may mean that they have not logged into Twitter for a while. Do not take that personally and do not block them for not following you back. You will probably see those same people again somewhere down the Twitter road.
Bonus Tip: If you want to go the extra mile after following someone first then “Like” that person’s Pinned Tweet. That will pretty much guarantee that they will follow you back and it shows you put some extra effort into following them. That takes more time to do of course, but it’s a nice gesture if you have the time to do that. 🙂
Twitter List Strategy Results: Using the Twitter List strategy on 12-10 – I followed 600 people first for a total net gain of 201 followers for 12-10/12-11.
On 12-11 I used the Leap Frog Strategy in addition to the Twitter List strategy. Twitter List Strategy day 1 was 12-10 and day 2 was 12-11. Total net gain of 257 followers for 12-11/12-12. Normally the total number of followers would decrease to something like 100-150 followers for day 2 using the Twitter List strategy alone. So I estimate that doing the Leap Frog strategy on day 2 added another 150 more followers, but of course it is more time consuming to do the Leap Frog strategy.
On 12-12 I unfollowed anyone who did not follow me back from the list of people that I followed on 12-10 since the number of people continuing to follow back was getting pretty slow/few. I followed 500 new people on this HOT Twitter List: https://twitter.com/MktgSciences/lists/a20161022/members and got a snowball effect going. I believe someone on that List that I followed first, added me to some other List that they created or those new followers came from 1 of my Lists that was retweeted since my Twitter account is listed in all of my Lists. 250 followers came from the people that I followed first in the List link above. 300 new followers came from other sources. Note: Some Twitter Lists may be old/older and may not contain people that are still active. So before you start following people on any particular Twitter List you should hover over several of the Twitter accounts in that List to see if the people in that List are still active.
1263 followers in one day! Woo Hoo! This is where I first realized I was doing everything wrong and the hard way and I just happened to accidentally do something right on this day. It took me a while to figure out exactly what that was. The strategy that I posted above is what got me 1263 followers on this particular day. 😉
These are typical total number of followers per day putting in a relative amount of effort and time. ie If you put in X amount of time expect X amount of followers:
Test|Comparison of using the strategy above vs doing nothing (no follow firsts or Retweets, but there were Tweets/Retweets circulating with my Twitter account listed in them):
On 11-5 and 11-6 I did not Retweet or follow anyone first. Subtract 40 from 11-6 since out of the 91 followers I got that day, 40 of those followers were people I followed first between 11-1 and 11-4. So new followers without doing anything (no new follow firsts or Retweets) was 51 and then if you subtract 40 unfollowers there is only a total of 11 followers gained for 11-6. Subtract 30 from 11-7 since out of the 81 followers I got that day, 30 of those followers were people I followed first between 11-1 and 11-4. So new followers without doing anything (no new follow firsts or Retweets) was 51 and then if you subtract 46 unfollowers there is only a total of 5 followers gained for 11-7.
Follow First Strategy: Using the Follow First strategy on 11-7 – I followed 150 people first for a total net gain of 177 followers for 11-7/11-8.
Categories: Misc Projects