We all want the same out of Twitter; to enjoy reading tweets, to interact with people who interest us and to find an audience for our updates. Here’s some quick tips on how to best maintain your account so you are following and being followed by the people that matter to you.
How to follow the right people on Twitter
I use two methods for this.
1) Look at the timelines of the people you are already following and see who they are communicating with. Then follow those people. Using this method you are assured that the person is currently active on Twitter and is prepared to engage.
2) Followerwonk - This is a good way to find people in a particular field of interest. It allows you to search Twitter bios using certain keywords. You need to sign in with your Twitter account first and then enter your keywords. You can then follow people based on their profiles. It will also tell you if you are already following them and if they are following you back.
You may have to get creative with your keywords. If you are interested in finding a new set of people to follow out of your field then this works especially well.
Twitter follower tools – who to unfollow
Maintaining a Twitter account will lead to an all round richer experience. If you follow people that are no longer using the service, are misuing it, or are never engaging with others then you’ll probably want to unfollow them. You may also decide to unfollow people that don’t follow you back.
I personally rarely follow people who are following a lot more people than are following them (unless they have obviously just joined Twitter). A quick clean up once a month will increase your chances of gaining new followers.
Here are the two tools I use to manage my account:
1) Twit Cleaner
This is an amazing web-based tool which tells you all sorts of information about your followers:
It allows you to identify people you are following who are no longer active on Twitter in a way that is useful or interesting to you. You can then choose to unfollow people directly from the site.
Great app for iOS devices only to see who hasn’t tweeted in a certain amount of time and who is not following you back.
A site like who.unfollowed.me is also a good way to determine who is not following you back but it doesn’t tell you who hasn’t tweeted in a while.
How do you manage your Twitter account? Any great tools you’d like to share?
