For ages I was afraid to unfollow people. Were you?

At first I thought they would get an email telling them I had dumped them.

Then I thought they would notice using one of the many tools that exist for monitoring these things.

Now I realise nobody cares if you unfollow them! Especially if they weren’t even following you in the first place.

So don’t fret it!

WHY YOU WOULD WANT TO AUTOMATICALLY UNFOLLOW

For those of you who don’t know, unfollowing people is a key part of any Twitter Marketing Strategy.

To build up a massive list of followers, you need to follow people first. It’s the pro-active approach.

You get followers by following people, hoping they’ll follow you back. And if they don’t follow you back… you automatically unfollow them! No dead weights needed thank you very much.

TWITTER RULES ON FOLLOWING AND UNFOLLOWING

Twitter HQ monitors how many people you follow and unfollow, to make sure you’re not a spammer. If you followed 2000 people today, and unfollowed them all tomorrow, you would most likely be marked as a spammer.

The key is to build it slowly.

If Twitter sees you following 2000 people when you only have, say, 50 followers… then you’re doing something very wrong.

If Twitter HQ sees you following 2000 people they want to know that other people have a similar interest in you. This is why you should wait for people to start following you back, then after a while unfollow those who negatively affect your ratio. The TweetAdder software can handle this for you.

HOW TO AUTOMATICALLY UNFOLLOW ON TWITTER

There are a few tools you can use to automatically unfollow people on Twitter.

My TWO favorites are:

1. TweetAdder - This is a tool that sits on your desktop and follows and unfollows people. You tell it you want certain kinds of twitterers, and it follows them for you. Then when whatever % of those people don’t follow you back after a week or so, it unfollows them for you.

It knows how to handle your ratio for you, so you don’t pop up on the radar at Twitter HQ.

I love this tool and I use it every day to both add to and clean up by twitter list.

I recommend it because it allows me to automate the endless clicking and monitoring I used to do with Twitter.

2. SocialOomph - This is a free web based tool that will automatically unfollow anyone who unfollows you, and send Direct Messages automatically among some other things.

This is good because people an unfollow you at any point down the line, and this monitors for that. If anyone kisses you goodbye, you don’t get them cluttering up your ratio!

If you are trying to build up a presence on Twitter these are the 2 tools you NEED to get your hands on.

SIMPLE FACT:

You’re in this Twitter game to win, not to find life companions. If someone isn’t following you, you don’t need to be following them. It’s nothing about being polite, nothing about being too afraid to insult people by automatically unfollowing them.

If they are not following you back within 7-10 days, dump them. And good riddance!

Hmm.. maybe not good riddance. But you certainly don’t need to affect your ratio by following the wrong people!

Lewis

P.S. You can read my review of the TweetAdder software here.