**UPDATE**10-30-2016 – Please note it appears that your twitter account may be shadowbanned if you do these types of techniques to grow your followers. I have since stopped doing this for now as it appears my account is shadowbanned. I have not been able to confirm for sure if the following/unfollowing outlined below is what caused my shadow ban. It’s possible the shadow ban may have occurred by tweeting my old posts over and over again. Im just not sure and twitter support has not responded to my inquiry. Proceed at your own risk!!
In mid to late December I started implementing a twitter strategy on how to grow twitter followers and I have officially confirmed it is working beautifully and with great success! There is only one week left in February as I am writing this post and my twitter followers have already increased by 1,228 this month. Last month my twitter followers grew by 1,275 and the month before that would have been another 1,000+ if I actually started the strategy earlier in the month. It’s kind of crazy and the coolest thing of all, is that I am doing this all for FREE and by literally only spending about 10 minutes a day on twitter. No joke! Actually sometimes I can do it in 6 minutes if I just do it really fast. I do this every morning when I get to work and I am done with it. So if you want to grow your twitter followers, you will want to read this.
I originally learned the strategy on Steve Miller’s blog We Retired Early about how he is growing his twitter followers however he is paying a monthly fee to do this. I basically just tweaked that strategy so that I don’t have to pay anything. Now if you are anything like me, then you love FREE and if you can get something free plus it helps grow your brand/blog or whatever, then its a win win situation for everyone. Yippee Ki-Ay!! Wow I swear I say or write actually the weirdest things when I am writing my posts. I seem to do this every week now where I write a weird expression that I never actually use in real life. Only in the blog! Then I start ranting just like I do now. Ha, okay enough rant! Here is the premise of the Cash Flow Diaries Twitter Strategy.
The basic strategy
1) Follow targeted users
2) Unfollow inactive users and users who do not follow back after 2 days
3) Schedule auto posting of your tweets
That is literally it!! That is all I have been doing and nothing else. So the reason why I can do it so fast each day and follow that basic strategy is because I am using specific software to do this. Three applications that essentially all do the same thing which is to follow/unfollow targeted accounts. The key is that I am using their FREE daily limits only. I am also using one wordpress plugin to auto post my tweets. Lets dig into each one so you can see what I am talking about.
But first, go ahead and gain 1 follower right now by following me here. I follow back!! 🙂
Crowdfire
This is a twitter software that allows you to follow other users by copying other twitter accounts followers. They also provide the ability to unfollow inactive accounts and accounts that do not follow you back. Here is the kicker, they allow 25 free targeted followers and 100 free unfollowings per day. All you need to do is use the FREE daily limits on this one and repeat cycle.
Here is what you will do using Crowdfire:
Follow targeted users – In this section, you will enter a twitter account who’s twitter followers you want to follow. Heck go ahead and put my twitter account if you want to grab my followers. I don’t mind. 🙂 It is best if you choose a twitter account that is similar with your site and one that has a lot of followers. See screenshot below. Just follow the accounts until it tells you your limit is up. Done.
Unfollow inactive accounts – In this section you will select “Inactive Following”, set your criteria to “1 months+” and just unfollow all these old accounts. Easy as pie! See screenshot below.
Unfollow accounts that are not following you back. – In this section, you will just literally unfollow all the users who are not following you back. You will want to make sure this list is sorted by “oldest first”. If you do not do this, you will be unfollowing the accounts who you just followed and you don’t want to do that. Be sure to also go into the “recent unfollowers” section and unfollow those accounts also. Use this every day until your limit is up and repeat cycle the next day. See screenshot below.
Now you are done with your daily ritual on crowdfire. Once you get acclimated in this software, you will be able to do this in about 2 or 3 minutes. So now there is a 2nd software that literally does the same thing but has higher daily limits. Let’s dig into this one below:
Status Brew – Formerly known as Unfollowers
This software allows you to have 50 free daily targeted follows and 100 free unfollowings. You will use the same techniques here and follow targeted accounts. You will also unfollow inactive accounts and unfollow accounts that do not follow you back. Now you will probably not even need to use all the “unfollowings” that they have to give you. Chances are the 100 free ones you got from crowdfire will satisfy all those. But if you do need it, then it’s here for you to use. Here is break down on what you will do in this app.
Follow targeted users – In this section, you will enter a twitter account who’s twitter followers you want to follow. I like to use a different twitter account to copy users from for each software. It is best if you choose a twitter account that is similar with your site and one that has a lot of followers. See screenshot below. Just follow the accounts until it tells you your limit is up. Done.
Unfollow inactive accounts – In this section you will select “Inactive Following”, set your criteria to “1 months+” and just unfollow all these old accounts. Easy peasy! See screenshot below.
Unfollow accounts that are not following you back. – In this section, you will just literally unfollow all the users who are not following you back. You will want to make sure this list is sorted by “asc” so that you only unfollow your oldest accounts. If you do not do this, you will be unfollowing the accounts who you just followed and you don’t want to do that. Be sure to also go into the “recent unfollowers” section and unfollow those accounts also. Use this every day until your limit is up and repeat cycle the next day. See screenshot below.
Now you are done with your daily ritual on StatusBrew. Once you get acclimated in this software, you will be able to do this in about 2 or 3 minutes. So now there is a 3rd and final software that literally does the same thing but has even higher daily limits. Let’s dig into this one below:
App Unfollowers
This software allows you to have 90 free daily targeted follows and to be honest, I have no idea how many free unfollowings this one gives you. I don’t know because I never need it. By the time I use the free unfollowings from the other 2 apps, I don’t need to unfollow anyone else. You will use the same techniques here and follow targeted accounts. Here is break down on what you will do in this app.
Follow targeted users – In this section, you will enter a twitter account who’s twitter followers you want to follow. I like to use a different twitter account to copy users from for each software. It is best if you choose a twitter account that is similar with your site and one that has a lot of followers. See screenshot below. Just follow the accounts until it tells you your limit is up. Done.
So now after using all 3 applications to follow and unfollow accounts. You will be following a total of 165 new twitter accounts per day and unfollowing anywhere from 100 to 200. It will take you a few days to get used to doing this but I am telling you, once you get acclimated, you will be able to breeze through each app in about 3 minutes each. It is super easy and a great way to grow your followers.
Setup Automatic Tweets
The last thing I do, which I really don’t do anything is I have the following plugin automatically tweet out every single post I have ever written in chronological order every few hours and every single day. You would think that this would annoy your followers but I have not been seeing a decline in my followers because of this. I have over 60 posts to tweet though so it takes a few days to recycle itself. If you don’t have a ton of posts to tweet then I would probably stagger the automated tweets to be a lot more separated from each other. It’s best if you test it out and see what works for you.
SNAP – Social Network Auto Poster
This is the plugin I use to automate my tweets. I use the FREE version and it just takes care of it for me. Now here is the caveat, it was a pain in the butt to set this up. They do have instructions and if you are technically savvy then you should have no problems configuring this. If you are not technically savvy then you might have a hard time getting this thing to work. My recommendation is that you download it, check out the instructions, try to get it to work and just test it out.
Twitter Analytics
Okay so now let’s break down how my twitter analytics have changed from implementing this strategy. If you don’t know, twitter has an analytics page on your account where you can see how many tweets, impressions, profile visits, mentions and new followers you have.
Here are my numbers for the months when I was not using this strategy:
November:
Tweets: 183
Tweet Impressions: 27.3k
Profile Visits: 1,330
New Twitter Followers: 265
December: This is the month I started doing the following and unfollowing however I started I believe mid month and at this point I had not yet setup the SNAP auto reposter tool.
Tweets: 248
Tweet Impressions: 32.4k
Profile Visits: 2,631
New Twitter Followers: 859
As you can see, the numbers are starting to increase just from following and unfollowing accounts for 10 minutes a day. Now here is where the magic happens.
January:
Tweets: 780
Tweet Impressions: 124k
Profile Visits: 4,186
New Twitter Followers: 1,275
February: This is only up until 02/23 when I am writing this.
Tweets: 542
Tweet Impressions: 133k
Profile Visits: 4,133
New Twitter Followers: 1,228 and counting. Still 1 week left in this month.
So as you can see, the numbers skyrocketed the last 2 months which are the months I have been fully using the strategy. My twitter account is picking up steam and this has also brought my page view traffic up to my blog. I admit that the page view traffic is not nearly as good though as the twitter analytics but the fact of the matter is, the more people you throw your brand/blog in front of, the more chances you have of them checking out your posts and gaining new readers.
If you start doing exactly this, I don’t see why you will not have the same exact results I have had. It’s all FREE and I really do do it in about 6 minutes each day because I am really fast at it now. (Ha, I said Do Do!) You should try it out and let me know what your results are.
Good luck and may the force be with you! I just saw the new Star Wars movie last week so I am in Star Wars mode lately. Oh by the way, if you like this post, please pin the cool image at the top of this post in one of your pinterest boards. I would really appreciate it! 😉
Check out these other posts:
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – November 2015 (6…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – December 2015 (7…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – January 2016
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – June 2015…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – July 2015 (2nd…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – October 2015 (5th…
Great review Alex. I recently started using crowdfire and have seen great results. I have not tracked my numbers but it has been a nice increase for sure.
Thanks Brian! Yep the app definitely works. I have considered just paying for it so I can just use one of them but I am trying to keep my blog expenses to the bare minimum. It would be cool if you tracked your numbers so you can see progress.
Thanks for sharing, I’ll have to give those tools a try.
I’m curious what the impact on your referral traffic from twitter has been. More followers are good, but if I’m going to spend the time to set up all these tools and figuring out who to target for followers, it would be nice to know the end results. I’ve been using Buffer for scheduling posts and plugin for retweeting archives, but haven’t seen much traction, so I’m leery of investing more time into Twitter at the moment.
Thoughts?
Yep you should give them a try. There really isnt a sign up process, you just authorize it to link to you twitter account and it does everything for you. It doesnt take more then 5 minutes per each app so its worth a shot.
Yes it will definitely increase your page views but probably not like the way you want it to. A lot of it also has to do with the quality tweets and what your site is about.
My best recommendation is spend 10 minutes a day on it and see what happens.
Will do. It looks like App Unfollow gives you 2 passes at copying followers of 50 followers each, so 100 total per day.
Quick update – I’ve added almost 300 new followers since I started doing this, so it’s definitely working.
After a few days with each tool, I’ve decided to stick with Tweepi for adding followers. With the other tools I found I kept adding and removing the same followers which was wasting my time and I’m sure irritating those tweeps and twitter. Tweepi will let me filter which people I follow (e.g. only active users I’m not already following), and show me if I’ve already followed that account so I don’t refollow someone who didn’t followback.
Oh, and on the traffic side, I’m definitely seeing traffic from t.co and ReviveOldPost. Not as much as I’d like, but it’s a great start.
Thanks again!
Yep! That is a good! Glad to hear. To fix the problem of copying the same users I just copy someone else’s followers everyday. There are so many twitter accounts to follow that it shouldnt be a problem. The problem you had is typically when you just try and follow the same person’s users over and over again.
Glad to hear its all working out for you though! That is awesome!
Alex, this is really helpful for me! I’m just starting out and it’s probably a good idea to get on this from the beginning. I’ll set up these tools this week. Thanks!
You have a huge advantage knowing about this from the start. Definitely take advantage of this. It will help get your new blog in front of more eyes.
Just set it up! Well, SNAP might need to be configured again if I got it wrong …
Thanks again for sharing this.
Man that kicks butt, how do you find the time to learn all of these things? haha
I’m interested to know how specific the people who sign up to your twitter are?
Well done though :)!
Ha, i usually just research during the day while I am at my day job. Luckily I have a lot of free time to do stuff like this and figure out how to make the blog better. It works out great for me! What do you mean by “how specific the people who sign up to your twitter are”? Im not sure i understand what you mean there.
Awesome to hear you have heaps of time haha, I do check out others blogs occasionally during my down time although not sure I could openly research or do my blog..
I should clarify that and say how targeted are the followers? i.e. ones that are interested in investing, real estate, cash flow.. as opposed to random accounts.. From re-reading the article looks like they’d be fairly targeted 🙂
Oh i see! Yes I would say the followers are targeted in a sense that the people I am following in hopes to follow me back, are the same people that are following other twitter accounts that are similar to mine. But there will always be a mix of random accounts that probably make no sense following you.
It doesnt really matter though, the more followers, the more eyes on your site/brand which is good.
This is super useful. I just started getting into the social media game with my blog, and it seemed really overwhelming but your tips make it seem really do-able. THanks
HI Erica! Thanks and I am glad you find it useful. I would say social media brings about 50% of my traffic so yes it is very important that you step it up. 🙂
I used Tweepi for a very long time but recently started using Crowdfire. Crowdfire seems to be faster in some ways but lacks some of Tweepi’s features such as following lists and filters.
Hi Mark, Thanks for the info. So can you explain how you use lists and filters to increase your twitter engagement? I am not familiar with using either of those.
Thanks
Once you get a large number of followers, it becomes really hard to keep track of your favorite people. But with lists, you will see only the tweets of the people on that specific list instead of everybody.
You can make lists based on location, profession, your competitors (better make that one private), interests or hobbies.
Lists (both public and private) make it easier to stay in touch with the Twitter users that are important to you.
The Tweepi “follow list” feature I mentioned was you could follow members of someone else’s lists. For example, I could follow the members of a list of agents in Any Town, Some State by another Twitter user.
The Tweepi filters were handy because you could weed out inactives, people you already followed or unfollowed. Also by geographic region but that is not very effective as many people do not fill out their twitter profile location.
It has been almost 3 months since I switched from Tweepi to Crowdfire and I honestly cannot say one is better than the other.
I have discovered Crowdfire will automagically filter out people you have followed in the past. This is nice so you don’t annoy someone by following them over and over again.
Oh wow! That actually is exactly what I was looking for. Didnt realize it was in the “lists” that provided that. My feed is definitely insane. Following way too many accounts and this seems like the fix.
Thanks for letting me know.
Tried this yesterday, and got ~40 new followers so far, so it’s definitely working!
Followup question – I’m seeing the same accounts in my “not following back” lists in each service. I started with Crowdfire, and did my follows and unfollows. Then I went to StatusBrew and I see in the “not following back” lists, the same twitter ids I unfollowed in Crowdfire. Am I doing something wrong? Or should I do follows in all 3 services, and just do unfollows in one?
Recommendations?
Oh yeah it definitely works! Yeah I had that problem too. I think the fix is to use Status Brew first, then use crowdfire after that. I think crowdfire pulls the changes faster and you shouldnt see the same accounts. If that makes sense!
I would definitely do the follows in all 3, and only to the unfollows as necessary. Sometimes I only unfollow like 80 per day. Each day is different. But I think the fix for you is to unfollow with status brew first, then crowdfire 2nd.
That’s awesome!
I just set it up and I’ll see how it goes.
However after installing the SNAP Auto Post plugin, I noticed it says for Auto Posting “Please note: This feature is depreciated, no longer supported and will be replaced with something much better in the upcoming ver 3.5”. I hope it will work.
Thanks for the great article!
That is great! Let me know how it works out for you! Yes SNAP says that for me also. It still works they just don’t support it anymore.
This is a great idea!! A quick follow up question for you…do you think your followers increased because of your targeted ‘following/following’ activities or because you were tweeting more often?
Also, what’s your tweeting frequency? I noticed it was around 500 and 700 for the last two months. Do you only tweet your own articles and do you tweet throughout the 24 hour period or just the 12 hours when it’s day time?
Ooo, another one. The SNAP setup requires you to put in your mobile phone in twitter. Is that true or have I gone down the wrong road? I’m a bit confused
Hi Fehmeen!
I think it is a combination of both that my followers are increasing but if I had to guess it would be probably because of the targeted following.
My tweeting frequency is 1 post per hour. So should be about 24 tweets per day. sometimes its a little less, sometimes a little more. I mainly only tweet my own articles but I try and retweet other people’s stuff when I am in twitter just messing around. I have the tweets being sent 24 hours. I get page views from midnight to 6am so I recommend you have them going through out the whole day.
I definitely dont remember inputting my phone number for SNAP. I think you might be going down the main road. Just make sure you dont pay for anything. There is no need and its all free.
Thanks man. I’ll try is again 🙂
Twitter will ask you for your phone number to verify the account if they think you’ve been acting suspiciously, e.g. following and unfollowing a lot of people… I received the same twitter notification when I started doing this.
Thanks Alex,
I’ve been watching your tweets on my feed wondering how the hell you’d set it all up.I was going to DM you and ask but then I found this post! Its really helpful, Ive already used the three apps and I’m just about to have a play with SNAP.
I recently discovered Crowdfire too and have been using a bit to unfollow my unfollowers! Great tips!
Awesome post Alex. I just went through your detailed process. One of my goals this year is to add 5,000 Twitter followers. Hopefully I can do it thanks to your excellent advice.
If you follow this strategy, you will definitely be able to hit 5k followers in less than a year. Keep at it!
Great post – very in-depth. For some reason Twitter seems to be my best performing social media but I’m always open to learning new info! Thanks for a great post. 🙂
Good for you! That is great twitter really works out for you. I get some traffic for sure but not a lot. I get more from pinterest and facebook.
Great post Alex!
Also, awesome to see the progress you have made over the past 9 months or so.
I ended up just getting a paid account with crowdfire so I don’t have to use multiple platforms and this get’s rid of the daily limits, outside of what twitter sets.
Cheers,
Dom
Hey Dom!
Cool man, crowdfire definitely works. Im just being cheap. Haha, once the blog starts making some more income I think ill cough up the money to just stick with one platform. Just be careful you don’t follow too many in one day. I heard if you follow over 500 a day that the chances of your account getting suspended are high.
Very interesting strategy, I love the idea of unfollowing inactive and others who don’t follow back. I think it’s difficult for me to target followers or copy when I’m not sure who I’m following. I’m stuck on the idea of growing organically but who knows! Thanks for the tips.
I think at the end of the day, the whole point of social media is to get your name/blog/brand or whatever out in front of peoples faces. I wouldnt worry so much about targeting specific users, just start following people and getting some eyes on your brand. You never know who is behind that account and who will click on it.
I just gave Crowdfire a try- this is slick! I can see that you need tools like this to be able to get very far with Twitter followers. I used Crowdfire to add a direct message to new followers too. Thanks for sharing these Twitter tips!
Hi Penny Pincher! Cool name!
Yeah I am pretty sure all the twitter accounts that have massive amounts of followers are all utilizing the same methods and tools. It really works. I considered doing the direct message but decided not to because I get annoyed at all the auto messages I get when I follow someone and didnt want to contribute to that.
Let me know if it works.
Great post Alex. I’ve noticed, just loading up my queue in buffer allows me to grow my following, but definitely not in numbers of 1K/mo. That’s crazy!
I do wonder if it would be even more of an impact just paying for the crowdfire account. I’ve been using them for a while, mostly to remove unfollowers. Great stuff here.
Hey Nathan! Oh yeah man if you purchase the crowdfire account you could get probably a few thousand per month but you would have to be careful because twitter suspends account that to do much “churning”. I believe that is what they call it when you follow and unfollow people a lot in one day in order to increase your stats.
Alex, if you don’t mind me asking, how much of your traffic comes from twitter each month? I’ve never been able to get it to amount to something substantial. Then again, I’ve been increasing my following by like 100/mo not 1,000/mo.
Well im not a google analytic expert but I think what I am looking at right now says that for march, 10% of my traffic came from twitter. Its not a lot but for the very little time i spend on twitter, it is definitely worth it to do my twitter strategy. Plus I imagine it will get bigger and bring more traffic through time.
Awesome Post, I just found out about this from Investing Hunting. Great idea to build your Twitter Network. Just followed you!
In fact, I am looking at SNAP – Social Network Auto Poster now. Thanks for pumping out some content with meat in it.
Thanks!! Cool, I just followed you back.
This is a fantastic guide. I will be doing this as soon as I get home! Really pumped to start getting my Twitter going.
It really works!! I have 8k followers now.
Hej in itself it works indeed. However, I was working with Statusbrew and than my Twitter account got locked. I had to get a message on my mobile and type in the code to unlock it. Twitter has regulation about automatic following and this was in violation.
It seems you can lose your account by using this way to get followers…
Oh yeah they will block you if you follow and unfollow too many people at a given time with consistent behavior. I read around and think the sweet spot is somewhere between 100 and 300 per day you can do without getting blocked. I normally just do around 100 per day because that is the limit I can do with these free trials that I use. If I were to pay for it and had no limits, I would probably just do like 200 followings/unfollowings per day.
Be aware, Twitter has started shadowbanning people who do this for “aggressive follower churn.” I was following ~250 people a day for several months without any complaints from Twitter, but noticed a drop in impressions and people replying and retweeting my tweets recently and discovered I was shadowbanned.
You’ll know you’re shadowbanned when you sign out of your twitter account and do a search for “from:yourtwitterhandle” e.g. https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3Aenwealthen&src=typd , and see no results. This means none of your tweets are showing up in search or hashtag lists. Effectively, you’ve become invisible.
I’d be very careful if you decide to try this approach, and keep an eye on your search results to make sure you’re not being shadowbanned.
Wow I didnt know Twitter shadowbanned. I know stumpbleupon and reddit do that. That is too bad it happened to you. My account is still fine however Im not as aggressive on the strategy. I only follow about 100 people a day and only like 4 days a week. Ill be careful though thanks.
Did you ever work it out with twitter to un-ban you?
3 days and counting, and still none of my tweets appear in search.
I’d sign out of twitter and do the search, or do it from a private browser window. When I search for “from:cashflowdiaries” I don’t see any of your tweets, so it looks like you might be shadowbanned too.
Yeah that is strange, if i do that “from:cashflowdiaries” i dont see any results but i looking at my notifications feed from today I already have mutiple retweets and likes on tweets I have posted today. Something is up for sure. Need to look into this. Let me know if you figure any of it out.
Thanks Jack
Did your shadowban ever expire for aggressive follower churn? I think I’m in the same situation
It appears my account is still shadowbanned also. Twitter has yet to respond to my support inquiry, I have since stopped doing this technique to see if that helps me get un-shadowbanned. I have also now updated this post at the top with a RED disclaimer indicating these types of techniques may cause a shadow ban.