Building an Audience on Twitter

Beginner to Intermediate User

Twitter drives more traffic to blogs than either Facebook or LinkedIn.  Have you ever Googled the key words in the title of your blog, and noticed that you are on page 78 of Google search results?  I wouldn't count on Google to drive traffic to your blog.  If you are going to be heard, if you are going to be noticed in the clutter of the Internet, you need an audience.  If you are going to build an audience, you will eventually run into a paradox.  That if Twitter drives blog traffic, and you must tweet the link to your blog,  how are you going to increase the size of your Twitter following? 

Increasing our audience on Twitter amounts to learning that we must unfollow.  Mastering who to unfollow, and weeding out the unproductive tweeps frees up space due to Twitter follow limits.   It is no secret that Twitter allows us to follow no more than 1,000 people per day, regardless if we are Justin Beiber, or just some new person recently signed on.   Of those thousand people, maybe 100 or 200 follow back.  What about the other 800?   We have to unfollow them.

This is where we run into another Twitter rule:  We cannot "aggressively follow, then unfollow".  Twitter does not want us to strip the followers as soon as they follow back, or worse, follow a thousand people, and then unfollow them immediately.  This will get one's account  suspended until we reply to the eMail and beg forgiveness.

I use http://Tweepi.com  (Free Version) to Unfollow.   There is no need to "set up a profile" on Tweepi, you can by-pass this step.  Use the "FLUSH" feature to unfollow tweeps who are not following back.

Always unfollow from the last page.  After logging in, and going to the "Flush" feature, on the bottom of the page is a small square on the lower left corner.

This is key to your unfollowing process.  Always work from the last page, backwards towards today.   Mastering speed and ease of use on Tweepi means getting familiar with the arrows (indicated in the above screenshot) and quickly going to the bottom of the screen and moving on to the next group of followers.  Mastering Tweepi means immediately scrolling to the bottom of the page, and hitting the "next" or "previous" button.

For the intermediate user, or someone who has been on Twitter for more than 3 months, here is another Tip:

You can use http://Tweepi.com  "Clean Up" feature to unfollow people who haven't tweeted in a few weeks.  These are rather safe, since they are A. Following You.  B. Are probably innactive  or C.  Have forgotten their password to Twitter.

Using Tweepi Cleanup to Find and Unfollow 1500 Innactive Tweeps

Using this feature, we can locate those followers who are no longer "Active".  Why is this a safe bet?  It is a logical and statistically probable conclusion that someone who hasn't tweeted in 3 months (or 5 months or 12 months) is probably no longer on Twitter.  In the very least, they will not notice that you have unfollowed them to free up space under Twitter guidelines, so you can follow more people each day.    I have also found it to be true that someone with a low ratio of followers to following is NOT as good an account manager as someone who has a high ratio. (Tweepi allows you to control this feature as well.  At the top, again in the "column" feature, you will note a column marked "Ratio" just click that button, and Voila!  you have this very important statistic).


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Lonny can be found on Facebook at  http://facebook.com/londunn

And on Linked in at http://linkedin.com/in/LonDunn


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Lon Dunn writes on Evan Carmichael as a productivity and efficiency expert. He wrote and edited The Thesaurus News from 1995 to 2001 with a specialty in Telephony Infastructure Stocks. With over 20 years following the Mobile Industry, Lon helps Companies, Professionals and Organizations develop Mobile Marketing Strategies combined with Social Media Strategies to strategically target specific markets and demographics to rapidly increase revenues. His most recent book available on Amazon is “How to Use Twitter for Local Business” with Tips and Mobile Marketing Strategies that anyone can do themselves. You can download the free “Kindle App for PC to download the book to your Desktop available on the Kindle Site:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Twitter-Local-Business-ebook/dp/B007VSR6Y2