With the constant influx of content on Twitter, you want to be sure that the list of people you follow is benefitting your brand. To build relationships with customers and other brands you need to be connected with users who are engaged. Before you decide who should stay on your follow list, decide what value each account brings you by:

  • Identifying what you want out of each relationship—what value does this user bring to your brand?
  • Knowing the risks of ending a relationship—are you burning a bridge?
  • Determining if the relationship offers a true connection—is this just a one-way conversation?

Finding silent Twitter users to unfollow

Use Sprout Social to assess how vocal your Twitter followers have are. To determine how your followers are engaging on Twitter in Sprout:

  1. Navigate to Account and settings > Settings.
  2. Click Twitter Follower Tools under Resources.
  3. Click Cleanup in the left-hand navigation pane.
  4. Select from:
    • Silent Accounts – users that have little or no activity on Twitter.
    • Irregular Usage – users that have unusual patterns of use or unusual friend counts.
    • Do Not Follow Back – users you follow, but don’t follow you.

Deciding who to unfollow

When deciding who should go and who should stay, don’t make any hasty decisions. Use Sprout to look little deeper to get a feel for the user’s activity. Remember, users you haven’t developed strong relationships with are the best to trim first.

Past Tweets

Look at each user’s past tweets to determine if the connection offers value—do they tweet infrequently, but share valuable content when they do tweet? This connection may actually be worth keeping. Follow someone who posts often but offers little value? Consider trimming them from your list.

To get a sense of a user’s past Tweets, click their user image to open their History.

Influence

Determine whether each user is influential. When you open the user’s history, you get insight into a user’s Twitter profile on the right-hand side. Take a look at their follower count – if it’s high, you might want to keep this connection.

Engagement

Have you conversed with this user? Look at your engagement with the user to see if there were any active two-way conversations. When you open the user’s history, click Direct Messages.

Unfollowing users

Once determine which users you’d like to trim, navigate back to the tab you want to do your cleanup from. Select from Silent Accounts, Irregular Usage or Do Not Follow Back.

Hide the user to remove their profile from the list. This does not hide the user on Twitter or from your Smart Inbox.

It’s up to you to decide which users are a vital part of your social strategy, but Sprout makes it easy with Twitter Follower Tools. Start making strategic moves with tools like this and the rest of social suite Sprout has to offer by signing up for a free 30-day trial.