As a small business owner looking to grow your Twitter account, you might have tried following users in bulk in hopes that they’d follow you back, or check out your account and visit your site.
It’s a tried and tested technique that works, but only for a percentage of your follows. In fact, the chances are that for every 1,000 people who you follow on Twitter, less than 100 will follow you back.
Because of that, you’ll be left with lots of accounts that don’t follow you back.
See also: How to grow your Twitter follower count
And as Twitter only allows you to follow up to 5,000 people before you reach that follow count too, it’s important that you unfollow people who don’t follow you back so you can continue to grow and interact with new accounts and potential customers.
Below, we’ve rounded up some of the best Twitter unfollowing tools to help save you time.
But before we do, let’s give a quick mention to the Twitter rules.
Is it a good idea to unfollow in bulk?
According to Twitter, “unfollowing large numbers of other accounts” is known as aggressive follow churn, something that the social network tries to prevent in order to keep interactions genuine and organic.
Twitter warns that unfollowing people aggressively and in bulk is against their terms and conditions and that your account may be labelled as spam or become suspended as a result.
And while Twitter is fighting back to reduce the amount of churn on the network, it’s still a common practice that many small businesses use.
Our advice?
If you’re going to follow lots of people, make sure you’re engaging with them, and follow them over a period of time rather than following thousands in only a couple of days.
This will reduce your chances of being flagged.
ManageFlitter
One of the most popular websites for unfollowing Twitter users in bulk is ManageFlitter. While a free service is available, it’s extremely limited and only allows a handful of unfollows per day.
The premium version, which starts at $12 per month, allows you to clean up by unfollowing users in bulk. There’s no limit on ManageFlitter’s side – you can technically unfollow thousands of accounts in one go if you want to, but Twitter’s own unfollow limitations might come into play.
One of the biggest benefits of ManageFlitter is the fact that you can exclude people you have followed within the past week, as well as excluding verified accounts, protected accounts, popular accounts, and people in a ‘Never Unfollow group’, giving you more flexibility and control over your unfollows and ensuring you don’t unfollow important clients, businesses or accounts.
ManageFlitter is a great premium tool for unfollowing users in bulk
Twitter Unfollow All
If you don’t want to pay to unfollow users on Twitter, then this free Google Chrome extension could be a great alternative.
With hundreds of five-star reviews, this software works when you open your Twitter account on Chrome, and presents a button which you can press.
Once you’ve pressed the button, the software will unfollow users in bulk, working its way down your list.
However, there’s one big downside: unlike ManageFlitter, this software can’t be programmed to only unfollow people that don’t follow you back.
It simply unfollows every single account that you follow.
This makes it a great tool for those who want to clean up their account and start afresh, but it’s not the best option for those who want to follow and unfollow to grow their accounts.
Twitter Unfollow All is certainly the most basic suggestion on this list, but it works well.
iUnfollow
The final tool that can help to unfollow Twitter users in bulk is iUnfollow. This software is free to use but is limited to 50 unfollows per day.
This is great for businesses and individuals who want to begin their Twitter marketing journey without following thousands of users at once; and in fact, setting a limit of 50 unfollows per day is a great way to ensure you don’t get suspended.
What makes this tool great is that you can use it to follow people that follow you.
This allows you to recognise loyal followers, and ensure you follow them back to keep them engaged. What’s more, you can also manage follow requests if you have a private account.
If 50 unfollows per day isn’t enough, then you can upgrade to a Pro plan for just $3.33 per month or $9.99 for a year.
This will give you the ability of unlimited follows and unfollows, but remember that Twitter’s own limitations will still apply depending on the size of your account.
iUnfollow is a low-cost, no-frills Twitter unfollowing tool
Wrapping up
Whether you’re for or against following users in bulk, there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s an effective way to grow your account in no time at all.
Give it a go and see what happens, but be mindful of the Twitter rules and exercise some caution when following or unfollowing large quantities of users.
If you need help with Twitter growth, then consider the social media for small businesses packages offered right here at Muffin Marketing.