too many followers?

Hi zpeeds,

Our last email about twitter suspensions sparked a lot of questions. Naturally people are concerned about having their accounts suspended, especially if they've put a lot of hard work into growing them. I want to share a few more thoughts on this.

 

Firstly, no one really knows what twitter is looking for when it comes to suspensions. We know the general guidelines they publish, but we don't really know exactly what they look for. To be honest this makes sense. If they published that they will suspend accounts that unfollow 1000 people a day then everyone would just unfollow 999 people a day. With this in mind we have to make our own principles and stick to them. These principles need to be good so that we can build our accounts safely and consistently over time.

 

I don't know about you, but I'm in this for the long-haul, so I'd rather grow a community that will still be there in a few years time.

 

Principle one:  Play nice

 

Try and use twitter in the spirit it was built, even if you are promoting a business or yourself. This will go a long way to keeping you on the right side of the "law" so-to-speak. It was built as a medium for people to broadcast what they were doing or thinking. Spamming a hundred links a day obviously doesn't fit into this philosophy.

 

Principle two:  Smooth gradual growth

 

Smooth gradual growth of followers is far better than irregular spikes of lots of new followers. Twitter looks for this. Set yourself a target and try and meet it on average every day, instead of once a month. Adding 25-50 followers a day is far better than adding 1500 followers three days in month. As your account becomes more mature you can adjust this upwards.

 

Principle three:  Avoid playing games

 

Unfollowing people as soon as they've followed you is a game. It's not a nice game, and you probably don't want people to do it to you. Twitter knows this, so if you consistently unfollow people who have followed you back, then you're likely to raise some alarms. It perfectly fine not to want to follow others, but if this is the case then don't try trick people into following you. Unfollowing people that don't follow you back is a different story of course.

 

People will one-way follow you in the long run. Especially if you have something interesting to say. Twiends.com offers you the ability to grow your audience in this way without playing games.

 

Principle four:  Don't spam

 

Communicate. Influencing people through conversation will get you far better results than spamming ever will. Twitter was not built for spam, so this is a big thing that they look for.

 

The bottom line is, if you keep those principles in mind you're far more likely to keep a clean account. If you are ever suspended you'll have good case for getting yourself unsuspended. Twitter does make mistakes from time to time, so if they review your case you don't want to give them an excuse to keep a suspension in place.

 

Play nice, grow smoothly, and don't spam..

 

Good luck

Twiends

  

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