Twitter Purge Update: What Happened & How to Recover!

For most users, this initiative didn’t affect their following and, if anything, has cleared out some pesky bots. But for accounts with more of a following (such as celebrities and businesses), the impact was noticeable.

Accounts such as 50 cent, Nicki Minaj, and, ironically, Twitter itself took the majority of the hit from the fake follower clean-out. Although some users have scrutinized Twitter for having the most inactive followers, it makes sense considering the fact that bots may tend to follow Twitter to legitimize the company. Nevertheless, some accounts such as Katy Perry and Justin Bieber are feeling the blow and seeing the mass amount of organic followers that they’re lacking.

Twitter’s new plan is considered to be a huge project because it’s committing to remove six percent of its users and suspend a million accounts a day in recent months. They are removing accounts that have not been used in 30 days or more, which won’t affect company’s business in most scenarios, but if social accounts engage in buying followers, the effect of the initiative is immense.

Del Harvey, vice president of Twitter’s trust and safety recently released a statement about their opinion on company and public figures buying of fake followers. “We don’t want to incentivize the purchase of followers and fake accounts to artificially inflate follower counts, because it’s not an accurate measure of someone’s influence on the platform or influence in the world. We think it’s a really important and meaningful metric, and we want people to have confidence that these are engaged users that are following other accounts.”

Many advertising agencies reach out to promoters through Twitter, Youtube, Instagram to post and talk about a product to reach to a wider audience. Yet because of the initiative, many companies have pulled out of letting promoters advertise their product because of their massive loss of followers.

What should your company do if they’re losing a substantial amount of purchased followers? First of all, you’re not alone! Considering Twitter’s riddance of bots, it’s time for a lot of companies to go back to basics. Some accounts are losing up to 70% of their following because of bought followers or bot accounts. Companies buy followers because it is affordable, effective, and easy. Taking time each day with your business’s social media accounts and getting to know your audience is going to be the way to gain back the lost followers. Jot out a few more strategies and get a team together to figure out a creative way to interact with organic followers through Twitter. Try using polls and graphics to grab attention of people scrolling through.

It also may be time to create new content and clean up your page to make it more aesthetically pleasing.  The new Twitter Purge Update initiative is going to force businesses to work harder than ever in order to improve their strategies and reach a broader audience on Twitter.

Whether the initiative is a good or bad thing for your business or personal account, it is creating a meaningful and actual representative of followers.