Please don’t follow me

How to work with (not around) Twitter’s 2,000 follow limit

Spammers have nested in Twitter’s dark underbelly since its earliest days. Fully aware of this, Twitter imposes a limit to the number of people you can follow all at once to hinder spam accounts and bots. Since that limit is 2,000 people, it’s not much of a hindrance to your average user. But for those of us trying to connect to as many relevant people as possible through Twitter, it can be a bother.

I’m going to offer some advice for cracking the 2,000 following limit, but first let’s consider why you need more than 2,000 people sending you 140 character messages to begin with.

This is about 2,000 people. Now imagine them all shouting at you. That's what following 2,000 people is like.

 

The line between spam and interesting content is thinner than you think

Honestly take a look at where you fall on the spam spectrum. We think of spam as bots, or companies pushing their offer into the world without restraint, but if you’re bulk following people you aren’t really interested in, or spending far more time shouting than listening, the Twitterverse doesn’t consider you much better than a bot. Almost all of us are guilty of this to some degree. If you’re swaying too far toward the spammer end of the spectrum, you should rethink how you use Twitter before you start strategizing how to get more followers. 

Who really needs to follow 2,000+ people? 

You could argue that no one does, because no one can actually sustain a conversation with that many people at once. Refining your list to a smaller network you interact with daily may be more beneficial than having 1 million people auto-follow you back who aren’t listening. Moreover, how many tweets do you have time to keep up with? If the answer is not nearly enough to stay up to speed on your Twitter stream, consider what the actual benefit of following more people is. That said, there are thousands of interesting people out there (here's how to find them) and if you’re following them for the right reasons, expanding your network can be a good idea. The whole point of Twitter is, after all, making new connections with interesting people. 

Ok, I get it, you still want to follow more people

2,000 isn’t the absolute limit, it’s actually based on a ratio – once you get close to 2,000 followers, you’re only allowed to follow 10% more people than are following you. If you aren’t close to having that many followers, unfollowing people is the obvious way to open up spots for new tweeple. People you should stop following are the ones who are either not contributing anything interesting or who have more or less abandoned their accounts. Here you can find tools to bulk unfollow people, but I wouldn’t recommend getting rid of people just because they didn’t follow you back - they may in fact be your most relevant follows. And you can get them to follow you back by listening to what they say and responding.

Focusing on generating great content and making sure it’s found will help you get more followers organically, and as such raise your follow limit. Using hashtags is a great way to help others with the same interests find you, as is promoting your account through your other social media assets like Facebook and LinkedIn, along with email sigs and business cards.

Do NOT auto-follow people back

This habit severely undermines the value of your Twitter stream and fills up your limit with fluff. There are tons of people bulk following others to try and boost their numbers with no intention of listening to anyone, including you. Following back can be difficult to resist as people can get snippy if you don’t. I’ve been publicly called out for not following someone back, and was forced to publicly state that I didn’t think they were very interesting. I was promptly unfollowed. I was perfectly ok with losing a follower, given that his main interest was fly fishing and, having never touched a rod, I had no insight to offer. So if you don’t share any of the same interests as me, please don’t follow me, neither of us will get anything out of it. Even if it makes our numbers look good.

The 2,000 follow limit is there for good reason. When you hit it, you should start refining your list, not finding ways to subvert the system. After all, 1 follower who really cares what you have to say is worth 2,000 who are just padding their numbers. 

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.