OK, so you have decided to go guns-a-blazing into the Twitter marketing universe. You have your Twitter account(s), and you are making tweets like a madman. Your following is growing and you might even be using handy tools such as Tweet Adder to build a targeted following, but then you hit a road block. Once you have followed 2000 people, Twitter wont let you follow anymore accounts. Why is that? Well, Twitter is trying to make sure that it’s service doesn’t digress into a useless tool of spam. Twitter knows that when a person follows another person that person often follows them back, therefore Twitter marketers generally follow hundreds or thousands of accounts and a large percentage of those accounts follow-back, this creates a “spammy” atmosphere and therefore Twitter has placed limits on the amount of people you can follow. But wait…. are we saying that you can never follow more than 2000 people on Twitter? No, not exactly. The Twitter limit on following people is only in place if the amount of people following you in return is not close (within 10% or so).
Get it? If you are following 2000 people you need to be followed by approximately 2000 people.
Example, lets say you have 1000 people following you and lets say you are following 1999 people. You will hit your “follow limit” the next time you follow a person on Twitter. Then you will not be allowed to follow anymore tweeters with that account.
So what can you do when you hit your follow limit?
You have two options:
1. Reduce the amount of people you are following.
2. Patiently wait and hope that you gain followers simply by making tweets. Once your following is around 2000 you will then be able to start following new people again (although you will need to keep those two numbers close to each other).
We feel the best option is #1. (Reduce the amount of people you are following). Unfollow people who are not following you back. Unfollow spammers. Unfollow tweeters that don’t interest you. The easiest way to accomplish that task is to use a tool such as Tweet Adder that can automate the process of unfollowing accounts that don’t meet the criteria you desire. Tweet Adder also features a great option which is to only unfollow accounts that were generated through Tweet Adder in the first place which insures that you will not accidentally unfollow accounts that you have hand-selected to follow.
The bottom-line is you need to have the number of followers at or around the same number as the amount of people you are following. If you keep the ratio of followers to following around 1.1 to 1 you will never encounter the dreaded Twitter following limits.
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It’s crazy but twitter seems to know when you are un-following people as well. Be careful how many people you follow and un-follow per day.