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How do I auto-follow Twitter followers?

I have seen a lot of people automatically follow people who follow them on Twitter. That's very cool. How do they do it?

Dave's Answer:

First off, a true confession. I not only do not follow everyone who follows me, but I actually have quite a disparity between the two figures. On my @DaveTaylor account, I have about 1700 followers but only actually follow about 125 people. I'm not sure what that means in terms of Twitter etiquette, but my reasoning is that I follow people whose lives are intertwined with my own. In a word, my friends. Now, there are lots of really cool people and far-flung friends who follow me but whose zeal I don't mirror by following them. That's because in my experience the more people you follow, the greater the distraction of Twitter becomes, and I just don't have the mental bandwidth to keep track of 1700 people. I mean, that's a lot of people!

However, I also completely understand that you see this differently and are more interested in a reciprocal relationship with colleagues, friends and other followers on Twitter. So let's see how you can do this...

To find out, I asked my friend @JoelComm how he has his Twitter account set up and he showed me how he uses the third party service TweetLater.com, coupled with a simple email rule, to follow people who follow him. It's slick, as you'll see.

The initial step, of course, is to sign up for an account at TweetLater.com. Once that's done, you'll be asked to enter your Twitter credentials on this screen:

Got that set up properly? Did you make sure to check "Automatically follow new followers" as I've highlighted above? Good.

Now, log in to your Twitter account and click on "Settings" then click on the "Notices" tab. You'll see this:

As highlighted, you need to ensure you've selected "Email when someone starts following me".

One more step. In your email program you need to set up an autoforward filter rule so that any time you get a notice from Twitter of a new subscriber, it's forwarded to TweetLater.

Since I use Gmail, I do that by clicking on "Settings" then "Filters" within Gmail itself. I create a filter that looks for the phrase "is now following you on Twitter" in the subject:

Click on "Next Step" and here's where it gets interesting:

As you can see, you simply autoforward matching messages to the email address twitterfollow@tweetlater.com. Save that new filter (by the way, mine is a bit more complex because I also tag invitations with the label "Twitter" and have it skip my inbox. You might opt not to do that on your own account).

Put these three steps together, the configuration on TweetLater, Twitter and your email application, and you're good to go!

Congratulations.

Now, let me go turn this off because I don't actually want to follow everyone who follows me. :-)

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Categorized: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Social Network Help (Article 8407)
Tagged: social media etiquette, tweetlater, twitter
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Comments

Dave,

Thanks for the info, but I personally wouldn't recommend the auto-follow. I am starting to get too many spammy follows from either over-zealous Web marketers or perhaps bots who follow 2K, but have a pittance of friends.

Auto-following these people would just clog my twitter feed.

As you say, there's only so many people you can follow well. So why let spammers sneak in there and push legitimate tweets out of the way?

Just my .02.

Posted by: Rich Brooks - flyte at July 24, 2008 10:43 AM

Exactly as Rich said, i would also not recommend this Dave!
As these days there are many bot or spammer members who just follow and never really follow us.. Why do we follow them? Just to read their spam tweets?

You gave a good tutorial for the needful though.

Posted by: Chetan at July 27, 2008 7:26 AM

I've got an even better solution. Here's how to auto-follow your followers on Twitter.

1) Visit http://www.help.twitter.com
2) Put in a request that they turn "auto-follow" on for your account.
3) Wait a couple days for a response
4) Enjoy!

Posted by: Jonathan Coffman at August 1, 2008 9:11 AM

This was exactly what I was looking for to automate my community building abilities for my company.

Thanks a bunch for posting this. Am looking forward to following any future posts from you.

Posted by: Ken Ramirez at December 18, 2008 11:23 AM

Hi,

Great post. I have created a service that will auto follow twitter users that have similar interests to you.

You can view the site at http://www.twollo.com/. I appreciate all comments and feedback.

My Twitter account is @PaulKinlan and twollo's is @Twollo.

Kind Regards,
Paul Kinlan

Posted by: Paul Kinlan at January 1, 2009 5:20 AM

Actually TweetLater.com has added a checkbox to auto-follow anyone who follows you now. No need to do the whole email account setup thing.

Add a Twitter account and you'll see the checkbox. Super easy now.

Posted by: Tim Bourquin at February 7, 2009 12:58 PM

I use Social Too http://www.socialtoo.com to auto follow people, it does some other stuff too, and their notification emails of who's followed you can be a fascinating insight into why they may have followed you...

Posted by: Simon Crabb at February 25, 2009 9:19 AM

thanx

Posted by: mahi at April 29, 2009 12:15 AM

You can also auto follow users based on theere niche. Check out www.twittersnipe.com.

Thanks!

Posted by: diggalive at April 29, 2009 5:28 PM

So Twitter is awesome for Taking traffic to you website . It is very
simple to setup and its a fun positive way to keep in contact with
people. To get more followers on twitter check out this amazing
tool.

Posted by: faisal majeed at May 3, 2009 12:33 AM

thanx for this post.

Posted by: mahi at May 14, 2009 2:04 AM

've been using but seems not working at the moment, probably because of API issues..

Posted by: nazcar at August 10, 2009 10:26 AM

Thank you very much for the information, having read what you have to say confirms my thoughts about auto following, and i will continue to manually manage my Twitter account.

Thanks again...Garry.

Posted by: Garry at August 27, 2009 5:07 PM

Thanks for this great article. Good news! The system has been updated and you no longer need to do anything with email. Even easier!

Posted by: Michelle Porter at September 9, 2009 9:12 PM

for some reason, it is good to auto follow, n others does..

depends on the person who followed us..
is he/him also have same interested like us?

Posted by: wniizzati at September 28, 2009 1:14 PM

That Google information is news to me, my last twitter account got banned well here we go again!!

Posted by: Steven at December 31, 2009 9:35 PM

I personally wish there was a way to NOT allow people to auto-follow. I find the concept really obnoxious! I followed this one person, and within 24 hours got about two hundred additional followers, most of whom tweeted only 1 or 2 times (or never) and yet had thousands of followers. And in another 24 hours, half of those followers stopped following me (that's how I know it was some kind of auto-follow; maybe they only continue to follow those who follow them). This guy must be in some kind of Twitter network.

I think it degrades the point and fun of Twitter. That's just my two cents worth! :)

Posted by: Tia at February 4, 2010 6:28 AM

It's good twitter auto follow way. The API is useful.

Posted by: jerry at February 6, 2010 12:38 AM

I'm use the http://www.fastautofollow.com/, I belive it's a best auto follow tools

Posted by: Lee at March 14, 2010 10:05 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!