Friend or Follow, TweetLater
Twitter on the Run, TwitSnitch
(What can they do for you?)

 

The problem:

We've all done it... We're trying to grow our follower base on Twitter and we get too aggressive or we got close to that 2,000 follwer limit before the 10% rule takes effect. (see my Twitter Tips page and/or Blog) Are my numbers out of line? What's the rule? Well, I think it moves. I have heard from several that they can no longer keep a 10% margin but more like 5%. Others confirm that it is at 10%. Mine seemed to stall at 5% for awhile but now seems back to 10%. Let's assume it's 10%.

Formula: Take your "Following" number and if it's over 2,000 multiply it by 1.1. Example: I am following 2711 people. 2711 times 1.1 equals 2982.1. Since you can't follow .1 people, lets say you CAN follow no more than 2,982 other people. Is this a hard and fast rule? No. But I wouldn't get too far out of line. I like my followers and I don't want my account blocked.

Okay we've hit the ceiling on our ratio and we can't add more followers. Now what do we do? Or we're close to the limit and we're afraid to add more followers. What do we do then? Either way feels like we're stuck.

A good solution:

One way is to manually go through and start deleting "Followings". The problem is that there is no good way in Twitter to really tell who is following you back from your "following" list. There is a free item found at FriendOrFollow.com. If you are just a few peole over the limit, this is a pretty good way to go. You don't even have to enter your password. It has three modes:

This solution works well if you are following just a few over the limit and are fairly inactive. That is, if you use Twitter for it's original intended purpose of just tweeting to a close circle of friends and family. But then, we wouldn't be over our limit would we. You can even sort your list several different ways ...BUT... (and this is a big junk in your trunk but) you can't sort by how long you have been following them. If you could, you would do that and start deleting from the oldest first. Simple huh? Currently, not an option.

A better solution:

Tweetlater has some fantastic features for managing your friends, fans and followings. It comes with a Free and a Pro version both of which have been recently upgraded. It does too many things to mention here but the one thing it does relating to this article is FOLLOWER CHECKING! It will also let you save drafts of your tweets to use again and schedule tweets to release when the time is right. I love the fact I can tell everyone Good Morning at 8:00 sharp even if I'm on the way to work and don't want to get pulled over for DWT (Driving while Texting).

It has many other features but the best one is you can try Tweetlater Pro for 7 days without paying a dime, without making a commitment, without giving a credit card or anything. Post like the big boys (and girls) for free! At the end of the seven days, they notify you that you are going back to the free version and offer a permanent upgrade. No hard sales pitch no nothing. There is NO reason to NOT try it.

Currently, I have turned off the "Send a direct message to your new followers" feature because I don't like receiving them unless they are individualized to me and I try to live by the golden rule. (Follow me @webselling4u and see... please?) I truly believe that if you are focused on helping others, everything else will take care of itself. I do use it to automatically follow those that follow me and delete those that "un-follow" me. (Important: it only deletes those that unfollow you after you have set up your TweetLater account. I also use it to send my morning messages to my favorite followers even when I want to sleep in. I like to send out favorite quotes spread over the day. This is the perfect tool for that. The professional version lets you schedule the same tweet with different messages each time it runs. So say I have some favorite quotes I want to tweet: I can put them in Tweetlater all in one message {within brackets like these and separeted by | piping symbols | like these} and it will randomly pick a tweet from the list and tweet it on the recurring time schedule you set (every 4 hours, 2 days, week etc.). This is very powerful stuff, makes you look like you know what you're doing, and can keep your brand in front of your followers 24/7/365.

You guessed it: The Best Solution (or where it all comes together):

I haven't forgotten that we're here because we may be close or over our tweet ratio. Stay with me, we're almost there.

Remember those Ron Popeil ads for his rotisserie? The theme was "Set it and forget it"! And isn't that really why you are on Twitter? I am. I don't want to spend my time counting tweets, followers, my followings, who is and isn't following me back etc. That was fun the first few days or weeks even but I want to spend my time tweeting, composing ads, keeping up with my friends and competitors. There are not enough hours in the day to do all that and keep up with Twitter's 10% rule (or is it 5% rule) and all the other little things we should watch for. I just want to work and play unencumbered. Tweetlater has features that it does better than anything else and I use them A LOT but I use it in conjunction with "Twitter On The Run". Twitter on the Run is how I manage friends, fans and followers.

I first bought it because I almost lost my account because of one of those ads that say "I just found this AWESOME site that gets me TONS of followers". TONS? More like TONS of SPAM and hookers, and cam bots and... you know what I'm talking about. TwitterOnTheRUn has a BULK DELETE feature that would go through all the crud without me worrying about it. Sounds awful doesn't it? Like you are going out there with a machette and wiping out everything in sight. Not so. It carefully looks at all the tweeple that you are following that are not following you back. Then it starts from the oldest (the one you have been following the longest) first and starts deleting forward from there. It does it in small chunks so you don't raise any red flags and get suspended for SPAM activity when all you're trying to do is get rid of the spammers that dropped you after you were nice enough to follow them back. I did use FriendOrFollow to see how many people I should delete before turning off the bulk delete and turning it over to "Target Followers".

Here's what the author has to say:

TwitterOnTheRun and TwitSnitch are the BEST TWITTER TOOLS AVAILABLE to automatically and intelligently find and follow the right people for you on TWITTER. TwitterOnTheRun and TwitSnitch are TWITTER APPS designed specifically to target TWITTER users who are already interested in what you are about - all on autopilot.

TwitterOnTheRun is a TWITTER APPS that mirror-follows TWITTERS that you choose. It DeletesTWITTERS that do not follow you back and it gives you a log of who you are following and what percentage of them follow you back. TwitSnitch uses an advanced filter to top your search lists withTWITTERS who tweet multiple times about your keywords. The more they use your keyword, the higher they are on your list. The higher they are on your list, the more likely they will follow you back, and the more likely you will want to mirror their follows.

A great feature for both of our TWITTER APPS, TwitterOnTheRun and TwitSnitch, is that you do not have to pay a separate fee for every TWITTER ACCOUNT that you manage, or for every keyword that you choose to search with. You can utilize both these TWITTER TOOLS for all of your TWITTER ACCOUNTS for the one time cost of $15 (package deal). 

While TWITTER encourages active Tweeting, recent history has brought to light problems with some abusive and over tweeting activities (SPAM) occurring on TWITTER. TWITTER recently adjusted the amount of daily activity that indicates unfriendly behavior with unspecified caps. To ensure thatTWITTER does not flag your account for aggressive activity, which can result in TWITTER suspending your account, TwitterOnTheRun goes into "wait mode" when nearing TWITTER's maximum allowed numbers of functions. TWITTER has vague guidelines on what it considers to be "aggressive behavior." Because of this, it is hard to know when your activity is going to be noticed or monitored. We have done extensive research on TWITTER to determine just what they consider to be "aggressive behavior" and have designed this software with the specific intention of avoiding this situation. Because of that, TwitterOnTheRun functions in a consistent and steady manner that does not send up any red flags.