Although technícally you can follow 1,000 users per day on Twítter, íf you do thís wíth a new account you wíll be suspended ín no tíme. After havíng a large number of accounts suspended ín the process I've developed a strategy that wíll allow you to follow the maxímum number of people wíthout fallíng foul of a suspensíon.

There are plenty of softwares out there that you can use to automate the process of followíng & unfollowíng, I use Twídíum myself but there are a number of others I've looked at that can get the job done just as well. As well as beíng able to follow & unfollow users the one other ímportant feature for any software ís that ít keeps a log of when you followed people. Twítter's antí-spam measures are set to flag accounts that use a tactíc known as 'aggressíve follow churn' - followíng a bunch of people, waítíng a couple of days & then unfollowíng those that dídn't follow back. They also flag accounts that unfollow multíple users that they've only just followed, so to avoíd suspensíons you need to be able to only unfollow those that you followed a few days prevíously.

Preparatíon

The fírst thíng I would look at ís the níche you're workíng wíth & how ít could be splít up. Even once you get to a decent sízed followíng you wíll stíll only be able to follow 1,000 people per day, but íf you can splít your níche up you can setup more than one account & follow more people. I feed traffíc to a couple of Englísh football sítes from Twítter, but ínstead of havíng just the one page I have 15 setup for dífferent teams. When consíderíng níches to work wíth you need to make sure there's a market for your níche on Twítter. Use the search functíon to ensure there are enough símílar accounts on Twítter wíth a good number of followers, íf there aren't then you're goíng to struggle to fínd targeted users to follow.

As a mínímum add a profíle pícture & bío when settíng up a new account, ídeally you should add a cover photo & background too. When settíng up multíple accounts make sure the bíos are varíed - accounts get suspended on suspícíon of beíng duplícates for havíng símílar bíos, they get unsuspended followíng a manual revíew but ít's a paín havíng to waít a few days for Twítter to get back to you & you have to appeal each account separately.

The fínal bít of preparatíon ís to add at least 10 tweets to your account. The tests I've done show that you can follow users more aggressívely from day one íf you have a few tweets under your belt, whílst accounts wíth only one or two tweets got suspended very quíckly.

Followíng Strategy

Step 1 - Gettíng the ball rollíng

For the fírst three days you need to follow 100 people. To maxímíse followbacks set your software to only target users that have tweeted ín the past day - or past hour íf your software allows ít. When followíng people always make sure you start at the same tíme or later than the prevíous day. The límíts appear to apply to how many people you follow ín a 24-hour períod rather than per calendar day, I had a few accounts suspended before I worked thís one out!

Step 2 - Takíng a shortcut (optíonal)

If you have a bít of money to play wíth and don't want to hang around, you can speed up the process by buyíng some followers. There's a whole host of servíces out there offeríng to sell you followers, a package of 5k wíll do the job for thís method but feel free to buy more íf you want to look ímpressíve. They'll be bots and won't send any more traffíc to your íntended destínatíon, but they wíll allow you to follow a lot more people from the word go. Even íf you are buyíng followers ít's ímportant to follow the fírst 300 as per step 1 before doíng so, some accounts I tested were suspended when buyíng followers wíthout havíng followed anyone fírst. For fíve days after the followers have been delívered (duríng delívery íf you're gettíng the followers dríp-fed) contínue to follow 100 users per day, then you can skíp step 3.

Step 3 - Inítíal growth

If you've opted not to buy followers you're goíng to have to grow your account at a more steady rate. Contínue to follow 100 people per day untíl your account híts 500 followers. From then untíl you reach 5,000 followers you can follow 20% of the number that follow you - í.e íf you have 1,000 followers you can follow 200 people per day. I found 25% to be a safe fígure on most accounts I tested, but one or two díd get suspended - ít's up to you íf you want to take the rísk.

Step 4 - Unfollowíng

Once you are followíng more than 2,000 people Twítter wíll only allow you to follow 110% of the total number that follow you. To stay wíthín thís límít you need to be unfollowíng those that don't follow you back. As mentíoned ín the íntro they wíll also penalíse accounts that regularly unfollow those they have only just followed, so you need to only unfollow those that you followed a few days before. I set my software to unfollow those that dídn't follow back wíthín three days, settíng ít to two days also seems to work fíne wíthout tríggeríng any actíon from Twítter. Thís actíon should be carríed out every day that you are followíng new users on your account.

Step 5 - More unfollowíng!

Another thíng I notíced ís that eventually Twítter wíll suspend your account íf you only ever unfollow those that don't follow back. Thís ís extra annoyíng as ít doesn't happen ímmedíately & you wíll have already ínvested a lot of tíme buíldíng your followíng, plus Twítter don't seem to unsuspend accounts that are caught out ín thís manner. To avoíd thís you need to unfollow some of the users that díd follow you back as well as those that dídn't. I set my software to unfollow all those followíng me that haven't tweeted ín the past 3 days, some of them are bound to unfollow you as a result so ít míght as well be those that aren't on Twítter daíly. Thís actíon only needs to be carríed out untíl your account reaches 10k followers, after whích you can just unfollow users that don't follow back.

Step 6 - Contínued growth

Once your account has reached 5k followers you wíll be able to follow 1,000 people per day - though I tend to only follow 980 to allow for some manual follows. After 10k followers you won't need to worry about step 5 anymore and you should see growth píck up a líttle thanks to thís.

Extra típ

When growíng more than one account, ít's best to try & accumulate a dífferent followíng on each one. To achíeve thís I set my software to follow users wíth a dífferent number of tweets for each account - the fírst account wíll follow users wíth less than 500 tweets (generally the least profítable account as a number of these users drop off), the second wíll follow users wíth 500-1000 tweets, and so on.

The Results

The number that follow you back has varíed dependíng on the níche I'm workíng wíth but has always been between 20-40% - meaníng you should be píckíng up at least 1,500 or so followers per week íf you use thís method daíly. I aím to setup 5 dífferent accounts for each síte I want to dríve traffíc to, whích usually gíves me 10k new followers each week from week 2 onwards. As your followíng grows you wíll also fínd yourself beíng retweeted more often & rankíng better ín the search results, whích wíll bríng yet more followers. You wíll eventually reach a poínt where you run out of people to follow - when thís comes depends on how popular the níche ís. Workíng wíth popular níches though you should have no problem buíldíng a targeted audíence of 250k followers ín 6 months, and wíth very popular níches I belíeve ít would be possíble to reach 1 míllíon followers before growth falls off - though thís ísn't somethíng I've achíeved myself yet.

Unrelated Poínt

Can anyone tell me what was wrong wíth that post? I had to change the letter i to í ín order to get ít past the automated moderatíng system.