Twitter is a great place to network and connect with people, but that doesn’t always mean you want to follow everyone. There are users who are not worth following, users who never followed you back.
If you are a regular Twitter user, you know how to build a large following. If you want people to follow you, you need to follow them first. This is called the Law of Reciprocity. However, this doesn’t often work both ways. Especially in the beginning, you can end up following many more accounts than are following you.
That’s why you constantly need to review your account to see who is following who on Twitter.
You can do this by auditing the accounts you follow to see if they’re following back. If you find a spammy account you’re following, but they’re not following in return, it might be a good idea to drop them.
The question then you probably will be asking: “How can I find out who is not following me on Twitter?
In the past, there were many 3rd party tools that allowed you to easily find accounts that weren’t following you and let you delete them in bulk. Unfortunately, Twitter changed its API and its rules and many great tools disappeared. There are few tools that are left, but none of them are as good as before and most of them are not free.
But don’t despair, there are still ways to find out who is following you and who is not, so you can decide if you want to stay connected to them.
Manual Twitter User Removal
This is probably the easiest, but also the slowest way. You can find out if the person is following you by viewing their profiles.
Next to the profile name, it will say “Follows you” or it will be blank if they do not. Then you can decide if you want to keep following them.
The other option is to view the list of people you’re following. As you browse the list, you will see that all accounts will have the same label next to their profile name.
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It will say, “Follows you” if they’re following back or it will be empty if they do not. Based on this you can decide if you want to continue following them.
After you followed someone, it might be a good idea to wait a few weeks to see if they would follow back.
Free Twitter User Management Tools
Recently I found a great tool WhoUnfollowedme for managing Twitter users and running user audits. After you log in with your Twitter account, it shows you a list of all the users who you’re following, but who are not following you back. Then you can quickly remove them from the list.
It allows you to quickly see how many people following them and how many they’re following to help you decide.
There are some drawbacks to this tool. The free account shows only a limited number of users, whereas the Pro version will show you every single user. There are also a ton of ads. Regardless, if you want to occasionally trim the accounts that do not follow you, it’s a nice tool to try.
There is also IUnfollow tool that works similarly and allows you to see who’s not following you and delete them. The free account allows you to follow/unfollow up to 50 users each day.
How To Decide Whom To Unfollow on Twitter
Now you have a list of accounts that do not follow you, what should you do. The short answer is “Delete them”. Generally, you want to have an account that has an equal ratio of followers and accounts you follow. You don’t want to be seen as someone who follows everyone, but only has a few followers. So which accounts should you remove?
- Accounts that do not follow you back. (Unless it’s a reputable account you want to follow regardless)
- Accounts that are in a different language. What’s the point, if you can’t read them.
- Users with only a few followers, even if they’re following back, can be removed.
- Users with missing photos or user bios.
- Accounts that haven’t been active or posted in a long time.
Tool for Deleting Inactive User Accounts
Another great tool to quickly delete Twitter accounts that haven’t been active is UnTweeps. After you authorize the app with your Twitter account, you can view user accounts you’re following back based on the last time they were active. So if you’re looking to delete spammy accounts or non-active accounts, simply put a cut-off date to see all the accounts that haven’t updated their status during this time.
I usually start with 300. This will list all the users who haven’t updated their status in the last 300 days. This makes them good candidates for deletion. If they haven’t been active in the last year, it’s probably safe to unfollow them to keep your account fresh. You can do this in bulk by manually selecting accounts to delete.
Keep in mind, that the free UnTweeps account allows you to do only 2-3 free searches a month, so you want to start with a higher number of inactive days.
We all know that not everyone will follow you back and this can be a real source of frustration. It forces you to constantly question the real number of your followers. Fortunately, there are helpful tools for running Twitter user audits that will tell you how many fake accounts follow you and let you know who is following you and who is not.
To quickly estimate how many fake Twitter accounts you have, use Sparktorro Fake Follower Audit. It will let you analyze any Twitter account and return a percentage of followers that are thought to be fake.
After the Audit, you can manually delete users whose accounts look spammy or use tools to delete the dormant accounts.
These are only some of the strategies and tools you can use to find and remove the followers who are either spammy, not following you back, or have been abandoned.
Fake followers and spammy accounts will damage your social media standing and your brand. It’s not just the number of followers that matters, it’s the quality of followers.
By running a regular social media audit, you will ensure your account attracts real users who want to engage, follow your posts and share them with others.
