How to be a Twitter Bad Ass: #2 The Following

This post is not about what you must do to be effective on Twitter. It’s not even about what you should do. This post is about what I did. I brought my Twitter following to over 2,000 in the first month. Then, I let it ride on autopilot. At this moment, I have 7832 followers. I started last summer.

I have cut over 1800 followers who did not fit. I have had about 1900 stop following when I did not fit them. C'est la vie.

In post #1, we talked about setting up your profile. In short, just pretend your Twitter profile is for LinkedIn. Make it professional. If you want to read the previous post, it’s here.

The end goal is to create a following that will be your audience for promoting your stuff. You want active followers who have an interest in that stuff.

There’s another strong benefit. Any Medium member who follows you on Twitter automatically follows you on Medium. That’s reason enough to make Twitter work.

Twitter is different than what you’re used to

Tweets have a lifespan of seconds to minutes. A busy newsfeed zooms along faster than you can keep up. Don’t even try.

Twitter is like a radio station. The station broadcasts even when we’re not there to hear the music.

We don’t care. Neither does the radio station. If enough people listen at any particular time, that’s good enough for them.

The same goes for Twitter.

Just like radio, you need a ton of followers to make things happen. The good news is that it’s not hard to do. There are tools make things easier.

Those tools certainly help, but they are not absolutely required.

Tool Talk

The two most popular tools are Crowdfire and Unfollowers. They both have free versions.

That’s nice.

The free versions have limited functionality and usage limits that limit them. They aren't worth the effort.

I would say that Crowdfire’s free version is more useful than Unfollowers free version. I say that even though I prefer Unfollowers paid plan over Crowdfire’s.

Again, those paid plans streamline things. They automate some processes. They are not pre-requisites to getting the job done on Twitter.

Call them a “nice-to-have” not a “must-have.”

Parting thoughts on Tools

Here's what I did.

Set yourself a target for the number of followers you want. To be conservative, divide that by 1500. Now multiply that by $10.

The result is about how much it would cost you to use a tool to get there. If that’s okay with you. Get a tool.

Using Unfollowers made this whole process take about 20 minutes a day. See how long it takes you without a tool. Is the difference worth $10 a month? That's not my call. You decide.

When I started my Twitter program, I used Unfollowers. At U$9.95 a month, it’s not horrible. I figured I’d use it for a few months and decide. One month was enough.When I talk about this stuff to clients, it’s a different story. For them, it’s “No tool, no go.”

Building Your Following

The first step stuck in my craw. The idea bugged me. In a lot of ways, it still does. It will bug some of you, too. It sounds silly as hell.

But it works.

 The process is follow/follow-back or unfollow.

In short, you follow a bunch of people. A day or two later, you go back. You unfollow anyone who didn’t follow you back. You follow anyone who followed you. Rinse and repeat.

Right now you are saying that there is no targeting. It’s just a random thing. It sucks. You’re half right.

You’re half right.

You gotta start with a half-assed targeted following. The secret, such as it is, is to choose whose following you want to emulate.  There’s no other way. You can focus it later.

Let me explain.

Let’s say I figure that people who follow Sarah Elkins would be a good fit for me. I know that Sarah is on Twitter. All I need to do is go to her profile. Once there, I can see how many people she is following and how many follow her.

Those numbers are links. I can click on the number of people Sarah follows and I will get a list of them. The same holds true for her followers. Let’s say I click on her followers number.

Now I’m taken to a list of Twitter accounts. I can see a summary of each account. If they already follow me, a “Follows You” shows up. See Sally here.

Sarah loves music. She plays in a band. For all I know, a bunch of those followers will be musicians and/or groupies. That’s not my demographic at all.

We can’t trust the target’s targeting, so it’s half-assed. For now, that’s good enough. We can fine tune things later.

Go ahead and click every follow button until Twitter says you can’t follow any more.

That’s a thousand clicks by the way.

Make a note of where you are on the profile.

Day one = done.

On day three and every second day after that

Go to your profile. Click on your following number. Unfollow anyone who isn't following you back. 

Go to your notifications tab. Follow anyone who started following you. I skip the obvious mills and follower sellers.

Head over to your target profile. Scroll down to where you left off, and repeat following people.

This process is simpler using Crowdfire or Unfollowers. The tools will tag anyone you have followed before to make sure you don’t repeat yourself. That’s a big no-no to Twitter.

Tools can also be set to only show you people that you can follow or unfollow depending on what you’re doing. 

A word of warning

At this point, the following process is half-blind. As you follow, you will follow some real “winners.” This is particularly true if you are targeting a big name’s followers. You will see some not so appetizing tweets. You will see some weird ones. You will see some unsavory ones.

You can avoid that, but it just takes too much time. Go ahead and unfollow them as you find them.

Twitter Limits

Twitter will allow you to follow 1000 new people a day per account. Every account can follow up to 5000 people. Once you hit 5000, Twitter will impose other limits. You can only follow about 10% more people than follow you.

That means you will zoom up to about 4000 followers. There is a No-Man’s-Land between 4000 and 11000 followers. There, growth slows down in a big way.

That’s where you will be spending your time focusing your followers list.

That also sounds like a good segue to the next post.

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