Twitter - Successful Management Of The Follow Limit

Are you following 2,000 people on Twitter yet? And how many are following you? More than 2,000? Or maybe far fewer... and if it is fewer, you may have reached the dreaded Follow Ceiling.

In the good old days of Twitter (if something as relatively young as this can be said to have 'good old days') there were no follow limits. You could just follow as many people as you felt like following -- regardless of how many people followed you.

As Twitter has become more popular, this has changed. They have had to set some limits on how many people you can follow. One such limit is the 2,000 followed rule.

I quote from the Twitter Support area:

We do not limit the number of people who can follow you, but we have put limits in place to stop people from aggressively following others. Everyone is allowed to follow 2,000 people. After that, follow limits are based on the number of people who are following you.

Can You Only Follow 2,000 Tweeple?

Well, not exactly. What it does mean, however, is that once you are following 2,000 people, you have to start balancing the number of people you follow, based on how many follow you.

One way to do this balancing act is to unfollow people until the number of your followers more closely aligns with the number of people you are following.

How Do You Know Whom You Should Unfollow?

One rule of thumb is that you might stop following people who are not contributing regularly on the Twitter stream. Or whose Tweets are not all that interesting to you.

Another consideration might be that you could unfollow people who do not follow you back.

However, remember that there are many market leaders and up-and-comers whose Tweets are well worth following for the value they offer, but they don't follow many people themselves. You'll probably want to continue to follow them.

How Can You Find Out Those You Follow but Who Aren't Following You?

Well, you can log in to your Twitter account and, on your home page, click on 'View All' under the pictures of people you are following. You will now see everyone you are following, and if they follow you back, you will see a 'Direct message' text link under their Twitter name. If there is no 'Direct message' text link, then they don't follow you.

To stop following anyone in your list (whether they follow you or not), just click the 'remove' link on the right. You'll have to do this one person at a time, but you can do it all from this page.

Add More Organization to Your Follow/Follower Management

If you want to save some time and have this information better organized for you, a really easy website to use is http://dossy.org/twitter/karma to help make this process even easier.

When you log in to this site, you are required to give your Twitter login information and an account is created under your Twitter login. Once you create your account, you can check the following with a click of the 'Whack!' button:

==> A list of those who are following you, but you are not following them back.

==> A list of those whom you are following who are also following you.

==> A list of those you are following, but who are not following you back.

It's these last two groups you will want to inspect for people to unfollow if you need to balance your 'following' and 'followers' lists.

The most useful group for these purposes is the one show by the setting 'Showing ==> Only Following' -- this will give you a list of just those whom you are following, but who are not following you.

You can now move quickly through that list, clicking the boxes to select those names you want to unfollow. If there are a bunch of people you want to stop following in this group, scroll to the bottom of the page and 'Check All.' Then unclick the relatively fewer names you don't want to unfollow.

Lastly, scroll down and click on the 'Bulk Unfollow' button. And, like magic, you have unfollowed a bunch of people who weren't following you back, and you have made your Following/Follower list more balanced.

You can also use this to select those who are following you, but you aren't following them. Then click each one you want to follow to select them (or use 'Check All') and scroll down and click 'Bulk Follow' to follow them all.

Manage the Tweeple you follow carefully when you get close to following 2,000, and you can break through that Follow Limit with ease!