Update 6/5/2023!
Twitter has recently made a change that broke the Twitonomy functionality I discuss in this post. I have switched to Unfollowspy and will update the guide as soon as possible.
When you have followed 5,000 accounts on Twitter, you hit one of their hard limits. If you don’t have over 5,000 followers yourself, Twitter won’t let you follow anymore people. You’re stuck until you get more followers.
Or maybe you aren’t. Let me show you an easy fix to let you start following people once again.
One solution to this issue is to drop your following count under 5,000. Then you start following people again.
But how do you decide who do you cut from your following?
My solution is to cull the dead accounts. These are people who are no longer using Twitter or have a new account.
In either event, they are never going to see your tweets and engage with you.
I’m on Twitter for engagement. I want to have authentic conversations with real people. It is super hard to have a conversation with someone who isn’t using Twitter any longer.
So how do you find those inactive accounts? I use a tool called Twitonomy.
Use Twitonomy to cull inactive accounts
Twitonomy is a tool to help you analyze your Twitter account. Let’s see how to use Twitomony to find those inactive accounts.
You’ll need to log in with your Twitter account. Just click “Sign in with Twitter.”
Once you get logged in, you’ll see a menu bar near the top of the screen full of different options. Select the “Following” option.
This will show you a report of everyone you are following on Twitter.
But it’s only showing 10 at a time. Expand it to 100 by selecting the “Display” drop down and picking 100.
The last column is called “Last Tweet”. This shows you the last time the account sent out a Tweet.
Click on “Last Tweet” and it will order the following list by that column. You should see Over a year or Last 12 months. If you see something like “A few minutes ago” that means its sorted the wrong way. Click on “Last Tweet” again to reverse the sort.
Since I’m using my account, the oldest tweets are from twelve months ago. You’ll probably have some that say over a year ago.
I know it hurts to unfollow anyone, but these people haven’t tweeted in over a year. They aren’t using Twitter anymore, or if they are, they are tweeting under another account. Let them go.
If you hover over the row, you’ll see an “Unfollow” button.
Smash that Unfollow button.
That’s one less person you are following which means you can follow one new person. Hopefully an active person you’re excited about following. You’re trading an inactive follower for an active one.
My criteria is to unfollow anyone who hasn’t tweeted in over a year. I’m probably being too conservative. Six months seems like a reasonable cut off.
Do be careful though. Twitter has limits on how many people you can unfollow in a twenty-four period. I think its around 400. If you try to follow or unfollow more people than that, you’ll end up in “Twitter jail” and be unable to follow or unfollow for a little while.
I hope you found this article helpful. If you did, or you have any questions, leave me a comment, or hit me up on Twitter at @tedatchley3. I’d love to connect with you.