Be Careful When Following on Twitter
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Marketing on Twitter has changed drastically over the years. Ten years ago, creating a follow/unfollow campaign was the thing to do. Basically, you would follow 75-100 profiles a day, unfollow a similar amount, and then watch your followers grow. Over the past 5 years, Twitter has made a solid effort not to make their platform a saturated field of spam and business ads. If you aggressively follow numerous accounts daily, it is possible you will be shadowbanned and will have a hard time reaching any new profiles. So what is a marketer to do to increase the followers a brand has?
When marketing on any social media platform, it is always important to remember the KPIs (key performance indicators) that matter. The number of followers you have is a vanity metric. A company with 300 followers may be selling way more products than a company with 10000 followers, so it is always important to remember that. But, if you do want to increase your followers on Twitter, there are still things you can do.
For one, you can still create a follow/unfollow strategy that won't result in you getting shadowbanned. Instead of following a hundred new accounts daily instead, follow about 25/30 accounts. Instead of unfollowing over a hundred accounts a day, unfollow more like 50. This will keep your brand under the radar and out of the "spam zone". Also, besides following new accounts, you can do what every single company or brand should be doing, creating great content. If you create engaging posts with wonderful copy and interesting visuals, you will naturally gain followers.
What do you do if you act too aggressively and get shadowbanned? Well, there isn't much you can do except take a break and wait for the shadowban to disappear. Remember, it isn't a race to gain as many followers as possible. It is a race to create wonderful content that increases the KPIs that matter.
How about you? Where do you stand when it comes to following/unfollow? Let us know here on Twitter!
