What to Do When You're Stuck at 2,001 Following on Twitter

As I’ve mentioned before, I run our social media at the company I work for. We’re a fairly new company and we’ve been working hard to grow our Twitter following for the past year. In March, we finally went over that 1,000 follower mark. That really is a great feeling. At that point, we were at nearly 2,000 people whom WE were following. Eventually, we hit 2,001 – and much to my annoyance and frustration – I realized we were stuck.

Twitter places caps on the amount of people you can follow. While I haven’t found exactly how they calculate who gets cut off when and why – I do know it is based on your following to follower ratio. And as much as this 2,001 cap has frustrated me, I do understand why the Twitter Police do it. They want to keep Twitter a happy place where spambots can’t just follow 3 billion people, trying to get a million to follow back.

So, basically, I’ve been painstakingly going through our list of 2,001 following and finding people I don’t think are benefiting us in any way, or have never communicated with us or responded to us, and unfollowed them. I did this sometimes when I had spare time (ha! spare time – what is that?) or when a particularly interesting group or person had followed us and I wanted to be able to reciprocate with a follow back. So, seriously, I used scroll through the forever loading list of people, unfollow someone, and make room for someone else. It sucked. Plain and simple.

Finally, my boss and I were searching the web for answers on how to deal with the annoying 2,001 problem and we found it: Friend or Follow. I love this site. And whoever created it. It’s a free service that can show you:

1.       Who you are following who is NOT following back

2.       Who is following you but YOU are not following back

3.       Who you are mutually following (meaning you are following them, they are following you)

Number 1 is the one that makes me happy. I finally found a way to get out of the 2,001 desert. So, get to the site, enter your twitter handle, click “Following”, and it will tell you exactly how many are not following you back and also lists them below. I found out we were following 1,142 people who were NOT following us back – that was more than who was following us.

I then started my process – still painstaking, but not as bad – of unfollowing those that I felt we'd probably never connect with**. Now, I didn’t just drop every single person because I was mad they didn’t like me back (cue stomping and wah-wahing), I reviewed each person and considered whether or not they would be a useful or good connection for us. If they were, I kept them, made note of their handle, and am working to connect with them better – in the hope that they will eventually follow back. I also kept certain people or organizations that provide great content, even if I didn’t think they would ever follow us back (or at least not yet.)

I don’t want this to seem like I am solely concerned with the numbers game – I certainly am not. I think it is important to build your following, as well as who you follow, around your interests, potential connections, and common values, goals, and missions. Otherwise it’s just a giant popularity contest with no real value.

Freeing our account from the shackles of 2,001 (we drastically fell to 1,005 following) has allowed me to follow back people who have taken notice of us, or follow someone I discover. And in the 3 weeks since, we have increased by 70 followers. That is more than we had in the past 2 months. This has greatly improved our outlook – before we felt frustrated and convinced that we wouldn’t get anywhere. And finally, I can like my favorite song again.

**Here’s a tip: sign into Friend or Follow through Twitter, hoover over each thumbnail, read their profile info, and if you decide to, click “Unfollow” in the corner. **Double tip: Twitter only allows a certain amount interactions through outside sources – you will find you are unable to stay signed in after a certain amount of time. Friend or Follow states that when signed in the rate limit is 300 requests per hour (I found it to be much less, but I’ve got issues.) Just wait a little while (about 45 minutes) and log back in.