Having a large number of inactive Twitter accounts in your following list can clutter your feed and reduce engagement. Here’s how to clean up your Twitter account by unfollowing long inactive users in bulk.
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Why Unfollow Inactive Accounts?
There are several reasons why you may want to unfollow inactive Twitter accounts:
- Cluttered feed – Inactive accounts rarely tweet, so your feed gets filled with stale, irrelevant content from more active users. This makes it harder to find current information.
- Lower engagement – Since inactive accounts don’t engage, your tweets have less chance of being seen, liked, and retweeted. Your engagement metrics suffer as a result.
- Following limit – You can only follow 5,000 accounts until Twitter makes you have the same number of followers. Unfollowing inactive accounts frees up slots to follow active accounts.
- Irrelevant content – Accounts you followed long ago may tweet about topics you’re no longer interested in. Pruning them focuses your feed.
How to Identify Inactive Accounts
Manually checking all accounts you follow would take forever. Instead, rely on signals like:
- Last tweet date – The most straightforward signal is accounts that haven’t tweeted in months or years. Any lengthy absence likely means inactivity.
- Tweet frequency – Even active accounts can tweet rarely. But if an account hasn’t tweeted in weeks, it may be inactive.
- Profile image – No profile photo can indicate low investment in the account. But some accounts stay active despite this, so don’t unfollow based on this signal alone.
Tools to Unfollow Inactive Accounts
The easiest way to prune inactive accounts is by using Twitter management tools like:
- Circleboom – Has an “Inactive/Fake” section showing accounts with no recent tweets. Lets you unfollow them easily.
- ManageFlitter – Under the “Unfollow” section, you can filter by accounts inactive for any time period. Supports bulk unfollowing.
- UnTweeps – Simply set the number of days of inactivity and UnTweeps shows all matching inactive accounts to unfollow.
- FollowerWonk – The “Social Authority” sorting shows accounts by how recently they’ve tweeted, helping to surface inactive ones.
Step-by-Step Guide
Here is the general process to prune your Twitter following list of inactive accounts:
- Connect your Twitter account to your chosen Twitter management tool.
- Identify inactive accounts based on tweet activity and other signals. Most tools have filters to surface these easily.
- Review the list of accounts flagged as inactive. Double check that they are indeed inactive before unfollowing them.
- Unfollow inactive accounts in bulk by selecting them and using the unfollow button.
- Repeat every few months. Inactive accounts accumulate over time as more accounts go dormant.
Tips for Unfollowing Inactives
Keep these tips in mind when you prune your Twitter account:
- Unfollow inactives gradually. Mass unfollowing triggers spam detection so take it slow, just a few dozen a day.
- Don’t unfollow followers in return, even if they are inactive. This comes off as petty and can turn followers against you.
- You can also mute accounts instead of outright unfollowing them. This keeps your ratio healthy but removes them from your feed.
- Consider adding inactive accounts to Twitter lists like “Inactive” instead of unfollowing. This keeps them easily accessible if they become active again.
- Always manually review each account flagged as inactive before unfollowing them. This prevents accidentally unfollowing active yet infrequent tweeters.
- Check metrics like your Twitter engagement rate before and after pruning to measure the impact on your account.
Maintain an Active Following
Unfollowing inactive accounts clears out old unused accounts from your following list. But you need to take proactive steps to keep your following list filled with active accounts:
- Follow leaders in your industry, particularly those who tweet valuable content frequently. This keeps your feed informative.
- Engage followers who are active, and follow them back if you aren’t already. This builds professional relationships.
- Monitor hashtags and conversations relevant to your industry to discover more worthwhile accounts to follow.
Keeping your Twitter feed filled with active accounts ensures you have access to the most relevant and timely content. Monitoring your following list periodically and pruning inactive accounts makes this possible with minimal effort.
So in summary, unfollowing inactive Twitter accounts helps increase engagement, focus your content, and form better connections. With the right tools and a systematic approach, you can easily clean up your account by removing accounts that have gone dormant.
