5 Things to do When You're Stuck in a Following-Follower Rut

Twitter is quite the mystery to most.  It’s telling by how many books are published about  the workings of the site. 

One day you have retweets, mentions and followers coming out of the woodwork, then the next you’re scrimping to find people to thank for all those mentioned. 

It’s inevitable to go through a lull every now and again, but if you find your numbers have hit a wall and are stuck there, this post will help get you past it.

First, use a service like www.justunfollow.com weekly, removing all inactive users.  About once a month I recommend going through and removing those who are not following you back. 

Note:  Be sure to give a good week or more of lag time when you begin following people spontaneously, otherwise you’ll be unfollowing people you haven’t given a fair chance to follow you back.

The only way to climb the Twitter totem pole (unless you’re a celebrity or have incredibly good luck) is to follow people spontaneously.  So here are a few tips to get you there:

1.  Find an author or person who does something similar to you.  Find out who they’re following and follow them as well.

Note: don’t just go and follow their followers, be sure to follow who they’re following, use their taste in following.  If the person is loyal and trusted, you’d be wise to use their lead.

2.  Be sure to respond when they thank you for following or when they simply send you a shout out.  It’s important to make connections, so you don’t appear to be just a serial follower.

3.  Do not respond to direct messages.  Many Tweople have their account set up with auto-tweets that are triggered by new followers.  If you spend time responding to these, you’ll waste a lot of valuable time doing what they ask (liking their Facebook pages, etc.) and chances are they won’t reciprocate.  I recommend responding to requests only when they tweet you; this way you have a better chance that they will reciprocate.

4.  Another quick and easy way to follow people is to scroll through a loyal follower’s recently followed list.  This can be found by simply rolling through all their recent tweets and following those they’ve made connections with.  You can also do this by following those that they’ve included in their recent thank you tweets.  

5.  Last, and frankly the easiest, is to simply follow back those who follow you. 

Note:  make sure you only follow those who do similar to what you do (writers, bloggers, etc.) otherwise you’ll be following everyone and their mother’s uncle, so to speak. 

Tip:  A sure way to get others to follow you is to put a blurb in your profile like mine “I follow those who, like me; eat, sleep and breathe books”.  This way you give people a general idea of what you do and what you’ll do for them.

But most important is to offer quality content in your tweets.  This means to not only mention and retweet good stuff, but to provide your own excellent original posts and re-posts.  This, above all, will encourage followers.

Want a new follower?  Simply follow me by clicking this link.  I follow back all writers, authors and just about anyone who has something interesting to say!

Sandy is the author of fiction and memoirs.  Her latest release is a funny, kid-style memoir called No Thanks, Mommy, I Peed Yesterday.  

Coming October 20!  Don't Mess with Daddy's Girl, Book Two in her police procedural series, is a gripping romantic suspense about a man's love of two things: his girlfriend and the stock market.  Learn more.

Subscribe and get Book One for FREE today!  Click here for details.

To learn more about Sandy, please click here to go to her website.