I unfollowed 1,700 Twitter accounts in one day

I recently read a book called 'The 80/20 Principle' and I've really been putting its suggestions to work. I realised that there's a minority of people on Twitter who I get the most benefit from.

Until recently I was following 2,500 people on Twitter. My feed was way too hectic and there were lots of accounts I was following which just weren't very interesting or helpful. So I did a major cull (nothing personal!) and cut 1,700 accounts in one day.

I removed followers mostly one by one while I was down with the flu in bed. I searched for topics on Twitter I'm not interested in and then found accounts I follow that talk about them. I also just went through all the accounts one by one.

Remove Twitter followers in bulk

I did, however, also discover a handy free tool for removing Twitter followers called Prune Your Follows. It lets you search your followers so if you want to unfollow everyone who talks about crypto just search "crypto" and you'll see the bios that feature it. It also shows things like inactive accounts or over-active accounts so you can unfollow people who either post too little or too much.

How do you make a good Twitter profile?

I always tell my Twitter ghost writing clients that a strong bio is really important. Here's some tips on making a good Twitter profile:

• Have a clear picture showing who you are.

I'm 99% likely to not follow someone without a real picture. The only exceptions are people I've known for years. Here's mine:

• Add a description of who you are and/or your products

If I can't remember why I followed you, I probably unfollowed you. It's also good to describe what your product does instead of just saying the brand name. Here's my bio:

• No excessive hashtags

If I see a profile with multiple hashtags I just think it's a low-quality account.

• Interact with other people on Twitter

If I've never messaged or tweeted someone, I'll probably unfollow them. Also, if the person shows no signs of wanting to engage, I'll unfollow them unless they are incredibly wise.

• Be active on Twitter

If you last tweeted a month ago or only ever retweet other people, I'll probably unfollow you as it shows you're not putting time into Twitter.

Twitter follower ratio

I now follow about 800 people and I've got about 7,500 followers. and I take much more care when I consider following someone. It's a much better signal to noise ratio. So I think for me having something like a 9:1 or 10:1 ratio is good

I think when you are starting out it's good to follow more people. It's a great way to grow your Twitter following. But I think once you get to a few thousand followers it's good to start cutting back as your feed will get too busy.

I don't agree with people who only follow lists (it looks pretentious) or only follow 100 people (there are way more interesting people to follow).

Conclusion

I'm quite a sentimental person so I'll still keep following some small accounts that don't follow my "rules" because they've been following my journey for years. Entrepreneurship is hard so it's nice to have people around to support me.

But I've definitely benefited from cutting down my followers. My feed is way better and it just makes Twitter more fun. So why not do a Twitter cull as well and see if you can have a better feed too? The chances are you're getting 80% of the benefit of being on Twitter from 20% of the people you're following.