There’s no doubt that you will end up following people that you don’t want to.  You will also follow people that will never follow you back.  Some will create a Twitter account and not understand how to follow you back.  Others will know how to play the game well and just not notice that you followed them and never follow you back.

When you understand this, you will realize that you will have to let some of the people go that you are following.   At first I could not figure out how to do this efficiently.   Here’s what I mean:

• You max out the number of people that you can follow
• You need to figure out who is following you and who is not of those people
• You click into your follower page(s) on your account and go to each profile and see if they are following you

The last action (above) could take days and maybe even weeks!

Then I found the solution… (Please keep in mind that this solution only works effectively if you have 5,000 followers/following or less.)

Here’s what you want to do:

Go to http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ .  Twitter Karma is an application that is designed to unfollow large numbers of people.  It will also show all your people (followers/following) and tell you what those people are to you.

In order to use this application:

• Click on the “Sign In With Twitter Application”
• Follow the instructions to allow Twitter Karma access your Twitter account
• Once you get the authorization, click the tick box the says “Hide Avatars?”  (This will allow your Karma to load faster)
• Then click “Whack”
• Allow your Karma to load (This can take a while.  It can also time out.  If it does, just refresh the page and click “Whack” again)
• Once you Karma has arrived you are now ready to sort your Tweople.
• Click on the “Show:” dropdown menu and set it to “Only Following.  This will bring up all the people that you follow that do not or have not followed you back.
  ***Important:  Make sure that click “Only Following”.  If you accidently click “only Followers” and you unfollow all of them, you will devastate your account!***
• Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and click “Check All”.
• Click “Bulk Unfollow”

That’s it.  It’s really simple.

Here are few more things that you need to know.  First, you should only bulk unfollow people when necessary.  Doing it every day could result in the suspension of your Twitter account.  Second, on days that you bulk unfollow, do not go through your following routine.  This too could result in a suspended Twitter account.

In part four we talk about auto follow and unfollow engines and the power that can give you.

Related posts:

1. Building Your Twitter Followers Part 4: Auto Follow/Unfollow Engines
2. Building Your Twitter Followers Part 1: Twitter Follow Limits
3. Building Your Twitter Followers Part 2: Finding Followers