How to Remove Inactive Followers and Increase Engagement on Twitter: DIY Steps & Best Apps to Use in 2023

Are you tired of seeing your Twitter engagement lagging while your followers list grows with inactive and ghost accounts? I was too! That’s why I decided to do something about it. But when Twitter pulled the plug on its API in April 2023, my go-to app, Unfollower Stats, was no longer available. It felt like I had hit a dead end, but I wasn’t ready to give up. 

After some research, I found two incredible alternatives: Follower Search and Twitonomy. In this blog post, I’ll share how these two powerful tools helped me clean up my Twitter profile, boosting engagement and growth. I’ll also share some tips for identifying ghost followers and explain why it’s essential to remove inactive followers, not just the inactive accounts you follow. So, if you’re ready to say goodbye to ghost followers and inactive accounts, keep reading or watch this guide as a video below:

Why It’s Important to Remove Inactive Followers

Having a large number of followers on Twitter may seem impressive, but it’s important to remember that the quality of your followers is just as important as the quantity. Inactive or unengaged followers are not providing any value to your Twitter account and can actually harm your credibility and reach. Removing these followers can have several benefits, including:

• increased engagement rate
• improved credibility
• a healthy follower-to-following ratio
• enhanced account reach

It’s important to regularly clean up your follower base to ensure that you’re only following and being followed by engaged users who are genuinely interested in your content. Tools such as FollowerSearch, Twitonomy, and Unfollower Stats can help you identify and remove ghost followers in bulk. And, good monitoring habits can help you filter new followers as they come in. We’ll discuss best practices in the rest of this article.

What is a Good Twitter Follower Ratio?

While there is no golden ratio for what a good Twitter follower/following count should be, there is an essential theme:

A good Twitter follower ratio is one where you enjoy the timeline of tweets comprised of tweets from accounts you follow, and where your followers are able to see and enjoy your tweets on their timeline. If your timeline is boring, or if your tweets aren’t visible on your followers’ timelines, or if your tweets are boring to the followers they do get in front of, it’s time to clean up your twitter followers list.

MYTH: It’s best to have a lot of followers, but not follow a lot of people back.

Having too many followers and too few following can indicate that you are not engaging with your audience and may come across as spammy, disingenuous, or pompous. 

And on the flipside, having too many people you are following and too few followers can make you appear less influential and make it more difficult to gain new followers.

It’s important to note that the ideal ratio for you may vary depending on your goals and the type of account you have. For example, if you are a brand or influencer, you may want to have a larger number of followers to establish credibility and reach a wider audience. However, if you use Twitter as a hobby or to see what others are talking about, it might make more sense to follow more accounts than follow you.

Ultimately, the key to a successful Twitter account is not just the number of followers you have, but the quality of engagement and interaction with your audience. Maintaining a healthy balance between your followers and following, engaging with your audience, and regularly cleaning up inactive followers can help you grow your account in a meaningful way.

Twitter Follower Tools that work in 2023: FollowerSearch and Twitonomy

As I searched for alternatives to Unfollower Stats, I stumbled upon two fantastic tools: Follower Search and Twitonomy. Both of these platforms have unique features that can help you identify and remove inactive and ghost followers, cleaning up your Twitter profile and improving your overall engagement. Let’s dive deeper into what these tools have to offer.

A. Follower Search: Features and Benefits

Identifying Inactive and Ghost Followers

FollowerSearch is an excellent tool to find inactive and ghost followers on your Twitter account. By sorting your followers by various criteria, such as tweet count and following count, you can quickly identify and filter out those who are not actively engaging with your content.

Removing Unwanted Followers

Once you’ve identified the inactive and ghost followers, Follower Search makes it easy to remove them from your account. With just a few clicks, you can unfollow or block these unwanted followers, resulting in a cleaner, more engaged audience.

Exporting Followers/Following as a Spreadsheet

Follower Search also offers the option to export your Twitter followers as a spreadsheet. This feature allows you to analyze and sort your data outside the platform, making it easier to identify patterns and trends among your followers.

B. Twitonomy: Features and Benefits

In-Depth Analytics

Twitonomy is more than just a tool for identifying and removing unwanted followers. It provides comprehensive analytics about your Twitter account, helping you gain insights into your audience’s behavior, interests, and demographics.

Monitoring User Interactions

Twitonomy allows you to monitor user interactions, such as retweets, mentions, and replies. This information can help you identify engaged followers and those who are genuinely interested in your content, enabling you to tailor your tweets to resonate with your audience.

Utilizing Lists to Organize and Remove Accounts

One of the standout features of Twitonomy is its ability to help you manage and organize your followers using lists. By sorting your followers into lists based on criteria such as engagement level and interests, you can easily remove inactive or irrelevant accounts while keeping your valuable connections intact.

Checking Accounts by Last Activity Date

Another useful feature of Twitonomy is its ability to sort your followers and the accounts you follow by their last activity date. This function enables you to identify inactive or abandoned profiles that aren’t contributing to your engagement. By removing users who haven’t tweeted or interacted with others in a long time, you can focus on cultivating relationships with active and engaged followers. This targeted approach to managing your Twitter account helps create a more vibrant and responsive community around your content.

So, which Twitter followers tool is better?

In summary, both FollowerSearch and Twitonomy offer valuable features for identifying and removing inactive and ghost followers on Twitter. FollowerSearch excels in filtering and exporting follower data, while Twitonomy provides in-depth analytics, user interaction monitoring, and list management. 

Personally, I found Twitonomy to be slower in terms of user experience, but I was able to accomplish what I needed using only the free features. On the other hand, I subscribed to FollowerSearch because the actions were much quicker and efficient. One month was $29 and I had no need for an ongoing subscription to complete what I needed to do.

To help you get the most out of these tools, I’ve recorded a video walkthrough that includes a demonstration on how to speed up the actions in Twitonomy. Depending on your specific needs and preferences, you may find one tool more suitable than the other or even choose to use them in tandem for a comprehensive approach. By leveraging the strengths of these tools, you can achieve a clean and engaged Twitter profile even after the shutdown of Unfollower Stats.

Tips for Identifying Ghost Followers/Inactive Followers

Whether you want to use a followers tool or manually monitor your Twitter followers, it’s helpful to know how to spot a ghost follower. 

Ghost followers are accounts that follow you but don’t engage with your content. They could be inactive users, bots, or accounts that were created for the sole purpose of inflating follower numbers. They may also be active, authentic Twitter users that simly don’t see or engage with your content.

Identifying and removing ghost followers – whether they are inactive accounts or simply don’t interact with your tweets – is crucial to maintain healthy engagement on Twitter and improve your overall experience on the app. Here are some tips to help you spot ghost followers on your profile:

1. Determine Your Criteria for Ghost Followers

Reflect on what characteristics you believe define ghost followers for your specific Twitter account. For example, you might consider accounts with no profile picture, no recent tweets, and a high following-to-follower ratio as ghost followers. By establishing your own criteria, you can more effectively identify and remove followers that don’t contribute to your engagement and growth.

2. Look for Low Engagement Followers

Pay attention to followers who never like, retweet, or reply to your tweets. These could be ghost followers that are not genuinely interested in your content.

When managing a Twitter account with a substantial follower list, it can be challenging to recognize everyone and gauge their engagement with your content. In this case, using a tool like FollowerSearch or Twitonomy can be helpful in identifying followers with low engagement rates. Look for followers with very few tweets, as this could indicate that they barely interact with anyone, including you. 

By identifying and removing these low engagement followers, you can focus on cultivating meaningful relationships with your active and engaged audience.

3. Whitelist High Engagement Followers

While removing inactive accounts is essential for maintaining a healthy Twitter profile, it’s equally important to recognize and protect your high-engagement followers. Using tools like Twitonomy, you can create a whitelist for followers who consistently like, retweet, or reply to your tweets. By whitelisting these valuable connections, you ensure that they won’t accidentally be removed during your clean-up process. 

You can also refer to your whitelist when you want to spend some time focusing on nurturing relationships with your engaged followers. 

4. Look for Accounts with No Profile Picture or Incomplete Profile Information

While many active Twitter users may not use their own photos as profile pictures, some images can be dead giveaways of fake or spam accounts. Look out for the following profile picture characteristics that might suggest a ghost follower:

• Generic stock photos or images unrelated to the user.
• No profile picture at all or the default Twitter avatar.
• Overly polished or professional-looking photos that seem out of place.

Additionally, ghost followers often have incomplete or vague profile information. Be cautious of profiles that:

• Lack a bio or have a generic, copy-pasted bio.
• Provide minimal personal information or use vague descriptions.
• (If a business) Do not include a website or any other form of contact information.

By identifying and removing followers with suspicious profile pictures or incomplete information, you can better focus on building connections with genuine users who are interested in your content.

5. Removing Spammy Business Accounts as Followers

For a more personal and engaged audience, consider removing followers that are solely business accounts. These accounts often focus on self-promotion rather than genuine engagement and follow accounts solely as a means to grow their audience. To identify and remove business accounts, look for:

1. Promotional Content: Check for accounts that primarily tweet promotional material without engaging in meaningful conversations.
2. Profile Information: Look for company logos, descriptions, and website links in their profiles. Account names can also be a giveaway.
3. Interaction: Assess if the business account interacts with your tweets or contributes to your engagement.
4. Follower Management Tools: Use tools like Follower Search or Twitonomy to filter and remove followers based on specific criteria, such as the presence of a URL in their bio.

By removing non-contributing business accounts, you can focus on building a more authentic and engaged Twitter community.

6. Recognizing Valuable Business Accounts

While some business accounts may not contribute to genuine engagement, it’s important to recognize that not all business accounts are detrimental to your Twitter community. In fact, the right business accounts can add social proof and healthy engagement to your profile. Here are some things to look for in identifying valuable business accounts:

1. Relevant Industry: Seek out business accounts within your niche or industry, as they can provide valuable insights, share relevant content, and contribute to meaningful discussions.
2. Quality Engagement: Assess whether the business account interacts with your tweets in a thoughtful and meaningful way, rather than merely promoting their products or services.
3. Networking Opportunities: Some business accounts can introduce you to new contacts and potential collaborations, expanding your professional network.
4. Social Proof: Having reputable and well-known business accounts following you can increase your credibility and visibility, attracting more followers and engagement.

Rather than blindly removing all business accounts, take the time to evaluate their potential value to your Twitter community. By maintaining connections with valuable business accounts, you can foster a well-rounded and engaged audience that benefits both your personal and professional growth.

7. Identifying Inactive Accounts by Tweet History

Evaluating the tweet history of your followers can provide valuable insights into their activity on the platform, helping you identify potential ghost followers. Here’s how to analyze tweet history to determine account activity:

1. No Tweets or Low Tweet Count: Accounts with zero or very few tweets may have never been active on the platform. This could indicate that they have little interest in engaging with others or are simply created for following purposes.
2. Inactive High-Tweet Accounts: Some accounts may have a substantial tweet count but haven’t tweeted or retweeted recently. This could suggest that they were once active but are no longer engaging on the platform. Check their most recent tweets and likes to see if there’s been a significant gap in their activity.
3. Lack of Retweets: If an account has a low number of retweets or none at all, it could indicate minimal interaction with others, suggesting that they’re not genuinely engaged with any content, let alone your’s!
4. Compare Tweet Count and Account Age: Look for discrepancies between the number of tweets and the account’s age. A long-standing account with a low tweet count may suggest inactivity or lack of engagement.

By examining the tweet history of your followers, you can better identify inactive accounts or ghost followers and remove them to focus on cultivating relationships with engaged users.

8. Checking High Following-to-Follower Ratio Accounts

Ghost followers often follow many accounts but have few followers themselves. A high following-to-follower ratio can be a red flag, suggesting that the account may be a ghost follower. For example, an account that follows 3,000 users but only has 100 followers is an example of a high following-to-follower ratio. In this case, the ratio is 30:1, indicating that they follow 30 times more users than they have followers.

While this may not necessarily mean the account is inactive on Twitter, it does suggest that their ability to engage is spread thin. The implication here is that you’ll likely only receive diluted engagement from this account at best. With so many users to follow, it can be difficult for them to notice your content amidst the cluttered Twitter feed. By analyzing the following-to-follower ratio of your followers, you can identify potential ghost followers and focus on building a more engaged and active Twitter community.

9. Identifying Mass Followers

Mass followers are users who follow a large number of accounts with the aim of getting follow-backs, but they don’t engage with the content. It’s important to be cautious of mass followers, as they are unlikely to contribute to your engagement, despite their high follower count. Here’s how to identify mass followers and understand their implications:

1. Similar Follower/Following Ratio: Mass followers often have a similar follower/following ratio, with the number of accounts they follow being much higher than the number of accounts that follow them back.
2. Low Engagement: These users are often more concerned with growing their follower count than engaging with content that interests them. They may unfollow accounts that don’t follow them back, which further highlights their lack of interest in engaging with other users. If you see a tweet mentioning “1 person followed and 2 people unfollowed me” or anything of the sort, that is a pretty clear sign that person is just looking to build numbers through the arbitrary mutual following.
3. Focus on Quality Engagement: While it may be tempting to add mass followers because you know they’ll follow you back, this will hurt your engagement rates in the end. Focus on earning follows from people who want to follow – and engage with – you!

Keep in mind that when you unfollow a mass-follower, they’ll likely unfollow you back. Consider removing them as a follower all in one swoop!

Steps for Cleaning Twitter Account Followers/Following

Above, we covered tips for identifying inactive followers in generally. But what if you want to do some major cleaning on your Twitter following and followers lists? These steps will help you go through your current account followers and remove inactive followers. 

I highly recommend using a tool to help you sort your following or to export a list of your followers, although you can apply the general rationale even if you choose to evaluate accounts one-by-one within the Twitter platform.

1. Filtering by non-mutual followers

These are users who are not following you back and are therefore less likely to engage with your content. This will not only help you maintain a healthier follower-to-following ratio but also allow you to focus on building quality engagement with users who are genuinely interested in your content.

2. Sorting by tweet count

Look for followers who haven’t tweeted anything in a long time or who have very few tweets. These users may have never been active on the platform, which means they’re not likely to engage with your tweets.

3. Sorting by following (high-to-low)

Mass followers often follow thousands of accounts for the sake of growing their numbers, but they don’t engage with the content. Sorting by following can help you identify these accounts and remove them.

4. Sorting by join date (old-to-new)

Older accounts that have never engaged with your content are likely to be inactive. Sorting by join date can help you identify these accounts and remove them.

5. Sorting by last activity date

Sorting by last activity date can help you identify followers who haven’t engaged with your content in a long time. This is a good indicator that they are not interested in your content and can be safely removed.

7. Sorting by most listed

This strategy can help you identify influencers or celebrities who may be cluttering your follower list. By moving them to a separate list, you can remove them from your main follower list and still have a way to check what they’re tweeting about.

If you want a more detailed guide on how to clean up your Twitter account followers and following using FollowerSearch and Twitonomy, check out my video walkthrough. In the video, I demonstrate each step and provide tips on how to make the process more efficient. You’ll also learn about the daily limits and best practices for removing followers, as well as see my results after 28 days of using these tools. Watch here

Daily Follow Limits and Blocks vs. Removals

Twitter’s daily follow limit is currently set at 400 accounts per day, though they state these limits may vary based on various factors, including the age and activity of your account. If you exceed these limits, your account may be flagged for spam, and you could face consequences, such as being temporarily or permanently suspended.

But what are the limits when you want to remove followers from following your account? Tthere are two main methods: blocking and force remove. Twitter has not explicitly stated daily limits for either of these actions.  Though I don’t know for sure if there’s a limit, I’ve personally done several hundred actions of each in a given day (Keep in mind, my account had 20k+ followers at one point). 

It’s important to consider the implications of each option before deciding which one to use. 

Blocking someone will remove them from your following and followers list in one action.  However, that person will not be able to interact with your profile again.  If you are using the block action to clean up your followers, I highly recommend taking the time to unblock these accounts later. For me, I typically removed a bunch of followers via block actions one day, and then went and unblocked them all the next.  

Removing a follower let’s you take someone off your following count without blocking them. Twitter offers two ways to do this:

• First, you can remove a follower from your Followers list. To do this, simply navigate to your followers list, find the account you want to remove, and click on the more icon to the right of the Follow button. Then, click on “Remove this follower” and confirm your decision.
• Alternatively, you can go to the profile page of the account you want to remove from following you, click on the more icon (the three dots), and select “Remove this follower.” Again, confirm your decision and the account will be removed from your list of followers.

It’s important to note that removing a follower does not prevent them from requesting to follow your account again (if your tweets are private) or following your account again (if your tweets are public). Additionally, this functionality is currently only available on the web version of Twitter.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide which method to use and how many followers to remove per day. However, it’s important to keep Twitter’s daily limits in mind and to use caution when removing followers to avoid any negative consequences.

Results and Benefits

By removing inactive and ghost followers, you can experience a variety of benefits that can enhance the performance of your Twitter account. Here are some of the benefits you can expect to see:

• Improved engagement: Removing inactive followers can increase your engagement rate, leading to more interactions and higher visibility on the platform.
• Enhanced credibility: Having a high number of followers is impressive, but if many of them are inactive or unengaged, it can harm your account’s credibility. Removing ghost followers can help improve the quality of your follower base and enhance your account’s credibility.
• Better follower-to-following ratio: Maintaining a healthy follower-to-following ratio can make your account look more attractive to potential new followers. By removing inactive accounts, you can achieve a more balanced follower-to-following ratio.
• Account growth: Removing ghost followers can attract new followers who are genuinely interested in your content, which can lead to increased engagement and visibility on the platform. This can help your account grow and gain more traction.

My results/case study with Twitter Inactive Followers and Engagement Rates

As an example, in just 28 days, I was able to increase my engagement rate by more than 700% and remove over 7000 inactive and ghost followers from my account. In other words, I nearly halved my follower count, but have skyrocketed my engagement! I also feel that my Twitter feed has been more interesting and relevant since I started cleaning my Twitter following list.

To maintain these results, it’s important to regularly clean up your follower list and monitor new followers. You can use tools or manually check for engagement and activity to ensure that you’re only following and being followed by engaged users who are genuinely interested in your content.

To keep learning:

Thank you for reading this guide on removing ghost followers from your Twitter account. I hope you found it helpful in improving your account’s engagement and credibility. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me on my business Twitter at @katt_wags.

If you want to learn more about social media management and optimization, consider subscribing to my YouTube channel, where will be uploading walkthroughs on ghost follower removal for other platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

Remember, regularly cleaning your follower base is essential to maintaining a healthy and engaged Twitter account. Don’t let ghost followers drag down your performance – take action today and build a better Twitter audience for yourself!