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How To Clean Up Your Twitter Followers Fast

You shouldn’t take action to clean up your Twitter following base until you have about 500 or so followers. Twitter operates in a reciprocal sphere. Initially to get people to follow you, you need to follow them. It just works that way in the real world.

However as your account grows and you get more serious about using Twitter and not just dabbling with it, you want to cut out people from your list that are sapping your SocialRank. That means chopping out followers who are not following you back. Don’t cut out people who have merit or who are high profile, but cut the people out who initially followed you to build their fan base and then chopped you. Additionally you want to cut out people who are just spamming your fan base with their repetitive tweets or get rich quick schemes.

To make this easy, I have found a free tool that allows me to cull through my fan base and with one click drop non- followers. I use www.JustUnfollow.com to clean up my list. (They are not paying me – I just like the online application.)

First login to your Twitter account then visit JustUnfollow.com and allow it to connect with your Twitter account. You will be able to unfollow people right from that screen. As your account and following base grows it is important to keep a differential between the number of people you follow and the people who follow you. Just Unfollow makes it easy to do.

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Growing Your Twitter Following Base Update

This past Friday I published a blog post about how to grow your Twitter following base. Here’s an update on our project. First, I prewrote that article on Saturday February 6th. On that day we had five people following AskKeebler. Our fan base grew all last week and as of today (when I am writing this – Saturday 2-19), AskKeebler has 60 followers.

Our plan this week to additionally grow our spokesdog account is to interact with followers and retweet their updates this upcoming week.

This is what I do personally, and it works to grow an account. Using HootSuite on a daily basis, I will review my home stream, they I will review the status updates of my followers. I will additionally review the stream of those I follow who are not necessarily following Keebler. Then I will choose pertinent updates to comment to, choose those updates that are funny, cute or informative to retweet, and click in to various Twitter accounts to find out more about people who had good updates. I will use the scheduling function in HootSuite to spread these interactions out over the day.

If someone had a good update, I will click in and either send a direct message or @ message (depending on if they are following me) with a question or to thank them for the information they have posted. I will also be looking to share pictures of Keebler doing some funny things this week and browsing for doggie videos on YouTube to share.

The bottom line is that I am looking to connect! Last week I asked a number of dog trainers for some help with Keebler’s incessant running around the kitchen table (God lover her), and got some great suggestions. I will go back to those people and report what I did and am trying, to say thank you.

When you look to connect more than vomit out spam about you and your services on Twitter, others respond by following you. I find that it is hard to initially build  a good following base. There simply is no short cut, but you can end up with a rich interactive community that makes your time spent on Twitter really fun.

If you haven’t followed our Spokesdog on Twitter yet, what are you waiting for? Our goal for this month is 150 followers. Click and and just follow AskKeebler to join the fun!

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How Do You Grow Your Twitter Fan Base? Watch Me

I have set up about two weeks ago a Twitter account for our spokesdog. On its own, linked from our website, and promoted in our e-newsletter, her Twitter follower base has grown to a whooping five followers. Two of which are my Twitter accounts.

I am going to teach you and you can watch my efforts, how to grow a Twitter following in the next 30 days. Remember our starting point is 5 followers.

Here are the steps I am taking and I will give you regular updates over the next 30 days.

  1. Set up an account at Social Oomph (they pay me lunch at McDonald’s if you click this link and buy). Add your Twitter account information there and then set up an auto responder and auto follow function for your account. This means if someone follows you on Twitter you automatically follow them.  Twitter is a reciprocal universe. It is not until you are big with over 1,000 followers that you should consider vetting followers or screening who you follow. You can do this on Social Oomph as well. But at this phase we want to BUILD a following fairly quickly. Don’t follow anyone yet!
  2. Now that the automation part is set up start by making sure you are logged in to your Twitter account and start doing searches of people to follow on Twitter. In most cases these people will follow you back. My guideline for new accounts is to select people in your industry or news that your particular followers will find interesting. So for Keebler, we should follow her food supplier – IAMS, her pet toy store – PetSmart, her vet – if he has a Twitter profile (he doesn’t and so really should see me!), and other pet related Twitter sites. I try to find about 75 people to follow to get going.
  3. Now sit back and watch your Twitter Feed using HootSuite or TweetDeck and interact with the people you are following. (Remember HootSuite pays me if you upgrade to Pro when you click this link – but a pittance.) Interaction is key, retweet interesting updates, ask questions, in other words have fun connecting. As you retweet and interact more people will join in the fun.

It is very important to understand that putting your Twitter icon on your website and blog are simply not enough, you must work the system for your Twitter account to grow and it takes time. You don’t want to fill your follower list with spammers, so be thoughtful about who you follow. Think about what other people want to read when they come to your Twitter home page there should be a match between your focus and who you follow.

Now watch www.Twitter.com/askkeebler to see how I am growing this account in action in the next 30 days. Oh by the way if you are on Twitter, come on follow me now help me get Keebler going!

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Facebook Changes Fan or Business Page Look Again

In an effort to blur the difference between fan or business pages and personal profiles even more, Facebook this past week changed how business pages look. The basic behind the scenes control panel for business pages has not changed, but the look and feel has changed significantly.

First, I have to say that I don’t like the new look. Before Business pages had tabs across the top; allowing you good control over helping to focus your user on things that were important to you. Now tabs have gone away, imitating the look of a personal profile, and links to pages have moved to a lower left sidebar. For me, the issue was, if we created a Giveaway tab now this tab is hidden under the “show more options” in the left sidebar and so is not featured as in the old business page look. The end user may miss our giveaway or have to hunt to find it.

One thing I do like is the option to select entities from which you post. Now when you post updates to someone else’s wall, you have the option to choose to be posting from your personal profile or your business page profile. Actually, that is a good thing as when I post on other Business’ walls, my icon and link was to my personal profile. Not my choice but Facebook’s default. Now I can choose. By choosing to post as my business entity, my icon and link matches my Facebook business page and so drives traffic to my page not my locked down, family only, personal profile.

What do you think about Facebook’s new look for Business pages. Click comments and let me know.