Twitter's Following 5000 Cap

14
6.6K followers

So I have been cruising along with Twitter and my latest site Spiral Revolutions. It has been a very good source of traffic and engagement for me. However, this week I was surprised that I could not follow anyone new as I had hit the Following 5000 cap.

Gaining Followers

I had used the technique of following people on a near daily basis to get return followers since I started using Twitter. I would go in find someone that was in a similar niche and follow a few of their followers.

It worked great and for about every 5 people I followed, 3 followed back. This now has me sitting at 5000 followed and all but 3000 follow me. Now that I am capped though, how do I move forward?

What's Next?

Well the first thing I did was read up on what Twitter had to say about it and they pretty much say that the only way to raise your cap is through obtaining more followers. Sounds easy enough, but the way I was doing it won't work.

I could start unfollowing people to follow more, but you have to be careful about that on two fronts. First Twitter has rules set up on how many you can unfollow. Secondly you risk losing a follower when you do this as well.

Personally I would rather not unfollow people. I followed all of them for a reason when I chose to do so in the first place. Plus, I don't want to risk violating Twitter's rules, so let's just say no to this option.

I decided at first I just have to ramp up my activity on Twitter with the assumption that the more active I am the more my stuff gets out there and the more I get followed. Will this work fast enough though? The other downside is that I cannot follow the new people back.

Any Ideas?

So I would ask you, the Wealthy Affiliate community, what is the best way to gather followers without following them first? Let me also throw out that I am not interested in purchasing followers either. Otherwise I am completely open to suggestions!

I know there is a Google+ share thread here, but I have not found any official Twitter share threads. The only ones I have found seemed very old and dated.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and support.

Keep working it!

James W D

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training

Recent Comments

13

I never knew there was a cap on how many you can follow...good to know, so I'm glad you shared this James...great to hear from you, btw!

Hmmm, now that is quite the dilemma, that you can't follow any one else until you get more followers...

Maybe this might help some, it seems it works pretty well for myself...of course maybe you already do this, but thought I'd mention it...
I noticed that I get quite a few followers on Twitter by mentioning other Twitter handles or usernames...and that is most often because I like to thank anyone that follows me...plus, I check out their profile too while I'm at it to see if I want to follow them or not...I no longer follow anyone that follows me although I used to do so.

I stopped doing that when I realized there seems to be some there that are suspiciously similar...profiles are almost exactly the same, same followers if any, and nothing on their profiles that would make me want to follow them either.

Anyways, every time I go on Twitter I check to see if I have any new followers and send out a Tweet saying "Thanks for the follow @"their twitter handle" ...

I usually mention up to 5 or 6 new followers at a time in one tweet if I can and also add something like "have a great day" at the end. Usually at least a couple of them will notice and either retweet it or mention you back...getting more eyes back to you...which in turn seems to help get even more people to follow you.

That and retweeting other people's tweets that you find interesting or useful helps too, especially by engaging in comments on them when you do so.

I'm definitely not an expert on Twitter, but it's what's been working for me at least... Hope it helps you out some! Best wishes and much success to you :) ~Sherry

That is actually a great idea Sherry. I know it works because I followed a lot of people that way myself! Now to just turn the tables!

I haven't tried it with Twitter yet because my following there has been growing slowly, but I placed an ad for 7 days on Facebook and received 20 more followers to my page. I plan on doing Twitter soon. People have to know what you're about to follow you. Ask followers on other networks to join you on Twitter. Much success.

Remove all unfollowers

I'm also at a nearly 2:1 ratio of who I follow and who follows me back.
Like you I've been following people in my niches and also everyone here that I can identify. But, I also follow any random person who follows me ( as long as their home page isn't full of nudity or obscenities).
If I have to cut some loose at any point it won't be fellow WA members or people in my niches though....the 'others' will get the boot!
David

wow, I had no idea there was a cap or a ratio thing with Twitter!! Learn something new every day!

You have to keep it into proportion, when the gap is too big, between followers en the ones you follow, twitter is going to hold you back

I had that issue when I followed 2000 and had only 1000 followers back, I did unfollow about 800 and after that I could follow people again

Yeah I am learning this the hard way rather then knowing ahead of time.

Yes, we are going to get tough:))

I've hit the 5000 cap as well and I do the same as Mike and clear out those who are not following me as well once in awhile. This won't affect your current following because the ones you are unfollowing are people who aren't following you anyway. I use www.crowdfireapp.com for this as it's a great Twitter management tool.

Other than that what I haven't been doing before but am doing now is actually doing more communication with Twitter members. If they are talking about something related to my niche I actually tweet to them about it. For example if someone was saying that they "don't know how to create a website and need help" I'd tweet them saying "Creating a website is pretty easy. Best of all you can build one for FREE! This article explains more", then I add a link to one of my pages that explains how to build a free website.

I feel that this personal engagement brings in more quality traffic and when they respond to my tweet, I follow them and they usually follow back. Before the cap I was using the same technique as you of just following people talking about my niche but wasn't actually having interactions with them.

I know it's a bit more work but having this personal interaction is good in two ways. First, like I said, it drives more quality traffic to your site. And second, if the user interacts back (tweets back or re-tweets or likes you tweet) that gives even more exposure for you because all of their followers will see it. As you can see if you do this a dozen times a day and people actually interact back you exposure may sky rocket.

Anyway I just started this technique a few days ago since I hit my cap and thought it was a better way to go about things so you can give it a try if you want and let me know how it goes. Not everyone will interact back but don't worry about it, you're still tweeting and getting exposure from your initial tweet as people can view it and it's also keyword searchable so you win either way.

Thanks for the great and well thought out response here. I think you have the right idea with the engagement and that is the same thing that I was thinking and have already started to take steps to do.

I like to use hashtags and I stick to this strategy of adding about 25 and then the next day I go through and unfollow those who ARE NOT following me. Therefore all of my followers are being followed back by me and anyone who isn't will be dropped. So far I have maintained a 2:1 Followers to Following ratio. It's still the beginning but just a thought! Hope this helps!
~Mike

Yeah I should have definitely paid more attention to that as I went along. Unfollowing the ones that don't follow back as you go along would have been much better. Now I have to be careful to not unfollow too many at a time, gotta play by the rules!

See more comments

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training