Thursday, June 23, 2011

Twitter 2000 follow limit


Twitter has a 2k follow limit. Before they allow you to follow more than 2000, you have to have a balance of followers: 91% or 1821 followers and then twitter will allow you to proceed past 2k.

You can simply wait until your following numbers reach 1821, but for now you cannot follow back any of those new followers. Note: Even after you pass 2000, you will need to maintain a balance of approximately 90%. However, it is easier to do with larger numbers.

A couple solutions: LISTS and SEARCHES

LISTS
Twitter allows you to create private lists.  You can create one or several lists and add to them the people you follow who will never follow you back.  This might include politicians, members of the media, celebrities, etc.  You can observe from their profile that they follow very few people but have lots of followers.  After you add them to a list, you can UNFOLLOW them.  You are able to read their posts by clicking on the LIST.  This frees your follow capacity so you can follow back people who DO follow you. It is important to choose PRIVATE when creating a list, as it is for your organizational purposes.

Look at a free program www.Tweepi.com  to help analyze. You can sign in with your Twitter ID.  Click on their FLUSH feature.  This tells you how many you are following that do not follow you back.  Click on COLUMNS to add certain columns, especially FOLLOW RATIO.  I also add BIO, FOLLOWERS, FRIENDS.  The pages are arranged in approximate reverse order of your following them. 

Observe the FOLLOW RATIO column.  You want to continue to follow those with follower ratios of 80 to 120%. Those people have a chance of following you back.  Those with very lopsided ratios, either much higher than 120 or lower than 80 probably will NOT follow you back, and are good candidates to be dropped. 

Select one with lopsided ratio and click on their icon.  That opens a regular twitter page. Use the drop down menu to ADD TO LIST.  Create one or more private lists, ie, MEDIA, POLITICS, etc.  Add them to one or more lists and then UNFOLLOW them.

If you see folks with fairly balanced ratios close to 100%, you might send them a note asking for follow back.  Observe if they have tweeted recently.  If they are very stale, they probably won't see your request and you may wish to drop them.

Continue this process until you are close to balancing your numbers of followers with those following you.  When you achieve numbers that are close to balanced, try to keep it balanced until you pass 2000. Just read your lists to see the tweets from those folks.


SEARCHES
Also you can save up to 20 searches.  You can save either people or hashtags.  This also saves you from following people unnecessarily. A saved search is most helpful for reading a specific person's posts regularly.


FOLLOWBACK
Use tweepi's RECIPROCATE function to ID those who follow you but that you have not yet followed.  Avoid following back marketers.  I look at their recent tweets as well as their profile numbers before I follow back. If people have large numbers of followers but not many tweets, it should raise a flag for you. 'Normal' people rarely have more followers than they have tweets. So someone who has thousands of followers but only hundreds of tweets probably is a marketer with 'fake' followers. 

I am sure there are other analytical programs out there. Someone had suggested TWEEPI to me and it works pretty well.


ADDING FOLLOWERS
To add followers always use a hashtag so you are reaching more than your own followers; ie #tcot #tlot #lnyhbt.  Look on hashtag streams for like-minded folks to follow. Real people often follow back.

Also reply to peeps with lots of followers.  Your reply to their post may also be read by their followers.  Of course, never reply to a marketer since their followers include many more marketers.