How I Lost Over 1,300 Twitter Followers Overnight

The other day, I decided to clean up my Twitter feed. Unfortunately, I may have inadvertently cleaned up things a bit too much as I went to bed having over 14,000 followers and woke up to only 12,700. It's not unusual for me to gain a hundred or more NEW followers each day, so losing this many Twitter followers overnight was a bit of a shock. Here is the one thing you should avoid if you don't want to lose followers.

How I Lost 1,300 Followers Overnight

I was using the following method to grow my social media presence. Follow others, and they'll often follow you back. Following others is a way to ping them, and then frequently, if they like your page, they'll end up following you back. I stopped using this method some time ago as I found that it leads to having followers who don't care about your stuff, but it is effective for growing your vanity numbers.

Anyway, I was tired of seeing all the junk in my feed, so the other day, I unfollowed everyone. It was much easier than sorting through the thousands of people I had followed. The one thing I didn't count on was that many people notice when you unfollow them. While I didn't intend to offend anyone, many may have seen it that way, and I probably had a few people following me that were automated to follow back.

Overnight, my follower count dropped off a cliff.

Oops.

If you care about your Twitter follower count, don't unfollow your followers! On a positive note, my feed is much cleaner, and frankly, I'm not too fond of the follow-for-follow game, so if you want a usable feed, it might be worth it.