Managing Twitter Follows, Software

[datadriven]

Obviously, as everyone needs to remove followers in relation to other Twitterers that are being followed:

a) Is it a good idea to "block" those that are unresponsive OR simply "unfollow" them? If you block, then whenever you seem them again they are flagged as a "block" (and you can reassign) but when you "unfollow" you may never recognize them -- accidentally "follow" them again, now intermittently. And could this be harassing to others, following and unfollowing them repeatedly. Also of course when you block someone they cannot happen to follow you by their own wanderings.

b) What is some decent, yet cheap software for matching who is following versus who you are following, that lists WHO each of them are with the ability to either block or unfollow them individually?

[Ted S]

Obviously, as everyone needs to remove followers in relation to other Twitterers that are being followed:

a) Is it a good idea to "block" those that are unresponsive OR simply "unfollow" them? If you block, then whenever you seem them again they are flagged as a "block" (and you can reassign) but when you "unfollow" you may never recognize them -- accidentally "follow" them again, now intermittently. And could this be harassing to others, following and unfollowing them repeatedly. Also of course when you block someone they cannot happen to follow you by their own wanderings.

b) What is some decent, yet cheap software for matching who is following versus who you are following, that lists WHO each of them are with the ability to either block or unfollow them individually?

I'm not sure I follow the purpose behind your questions... are you trying to block / remove people who don't follow you back [or keep following you]? If so, why?

[datadriven]

I'm not sure I follow the purpose behind your questions... are you trying to block / remove people who don't follow you back [or keep following you]? If so, why?

I've heard there is a 10% rule - that the number you are "following" should not exceed your own followers by 10%. That within this number is a healthy range. Specifically, I'm trying to find out why on this as well. Believe it has something to do with how Twitter displays its own serps or, some google rule of thumb. I know it sounds vague but I'm searching on this as well. Just starting on twitter. Perhaps this is one reason many of my tweets don't display among search results with the hash tags.

But I know they make software for managing followings/those you are following to help do this at a glance.

[Ted S]

I've never seen anything like that but then again twitter search is not something I've seen used much outside of trending topics [discovery vs intent]. Since most people follow just a handful of accounts 10% would be highly prohibitive to the system and negative to any sort of growth [90% would have to follow 10%]. The only hard rules I've run into is when accounts would get locked for following too fast but that was to the tune of thousands of adds.

Regardless unfollowing someone because you have too many follows for a system is a bad reason. And following someone for the hope they'll follow you back alone is equally impractical. Thus you're left with what actually works: Unfollowing someone because they provide no value / engaging content or following them because they do. Whether it's reciprocal may feel nice but should have little bearing in your actual decision. If you want results in social, and are not yet sitting near the top, you will need to communicate to who have yet to find a reason to follow you and stay away from following so many people that you can no longer filter out the noise.

I'm sure there are specific programs to track follows & unfollows but for a productive use [rather some mass follow gimmick] tweet deck or another posting app does a perfectly good job at flagging the relationship and letting you control it.

[datadriven]

Thanks - another important point I see, especially where there are many followers, is finding and removing those that become inactive users. I see where JustUnfollow claims to do this, but I have no experience with it.