Twitter - Controlling Followers

Keeping Control of My Twitter Followers

Anyone who has a Twitter account will know that other Twitter users often show up in your Notifications feed with a notification informing you that they are Following your account. This is a very useful service provided by Twitter and one which you should make use of to keep control of accounts who Follow you. Twitter has another very useful facility called Block which you can use to block unwanted accounts from having access to your account and timeline. This is all very helpful to keep control of which Followers have access to your account.

One of the biggest issues for many Tweeters is keeping control of Followers made more difficult because you have to scroll through all your Notifications to find out who has Followed you and if you do this at random, occasional intervals it becomes a mammoth task. Thankfully internet technology offers many different opportunities to make life easier. I have tried a number of different methods of automating the control of my own Twitter timeline with varying degrees of success. I am now using a couple of technologies which seem to provide the easiest and most efficient methods to control my Twitter Followers. The methods I use are not fully automatic and may not be suitable or practical for other Twitter users but may be worth considering. Firstly I weed out unwanted Followers daily by using an automatic process to notify me of new Followers then I review each account manually and decide whether to apply the Twitter Block or not. Secondly I use the Twitter Block List to pass on to fellow Tweeters who usually block similar accounts so that they can automatically Block the same accounts as those blocked by me. I will now explain each of the two processes in detail for anyone who wishes to try the same methods.



A) Daily Control of Followers

Controlling Followers daily is the most efficient method I have found as it only takes a few minutes rather than occasionally trying to a marathon blocking session. There are essentially two components to this process, an automated notification component and a manual filtering component. The first component employs a free automated notification system called IFTTT.com sending a notification to your email address, then the second manual component requires you to check your emails and using the emails from IFTTT.com go to the Twitter account which has followed you and review it then decide if you want to block it or not. During the Block process I usually post a Tweet on my Timeline to notify other Followers that I have Blocked the specific account. Finally delete or archive the IFTTT.com email.

The Automated Component

1. Go to ifttt.com and register for a free account
2. Create a Recipe to send an email every time you have a new Follower
• Select the Channels page
• Find the Twitter Channel and register your Twitter account with the Twitter Channel
• Find the native IFTTT Email Channel and register your email address with the Email Channel
• Go to the My Recipes page and click Create a Recipe button
• On the Create a Recipe page click the blue word this 
• Search for and select Twitter (the Channel registered to your Twitter account)
• On the Choose a Trigger page (step 2 of 7) select the New Follower box
• On the Complete Trigger Fields (step 3 of 7) click Create Trigger button
• On the page click the blue word that 
• On the Choose Action Channel page (step 4 of 7) search and select the IFTTT Email Channel (registered to your email account)
• On the Choose an Action page (step 5 of 7) select Send me an email 
• On the Complete Action Fields (step 6 of 7) you can leave the default settings as they are, click on the Create Recipe button.
• You can review your Recipe and make changes if you so wish. If you make changes don't forget to click the Update button at the bottom of the last page of the Recipe 
3. You will now start receiving email notifications each time your Twitter account receives a new Follower

The Manual Component

1. When you check your emails, open the notification emails from ifttt.com
2. Click on the Twitter account link in the email
3. Review the Follower account and decide whether to Block the account
4. Go back to your emails and delete or archive the email you have just processed
5. Repeat the steps above for each notification received from ifttt.com

I personally find that I receive between 5 and 10 emails per day and by dealing with them every day the chore of keeping my timeline and Follower List free of unwanted accounts becomes quite manageable as it only takes a few minutes every day rather than a marathon weekly or monthly session. 

B) Sharing Twitter Block Lists

Twitter now has a facility to export the list of Twitter accounts which you have blocked so that you can share the list with other Twitter users of your choice so that they can import your list into their account to automatically block the same accounts.

I am not going to rewrite the process of exporting and importing Twitter Block Lists so to find out how to go about it take a look at Blocking accounts on Twitter
I usually share my own Blocked List with some of my Twitter Followers by providing them with a link to a shared location in the Cloud on the internet.  Some of my Followers also share their Block List with me therefore we both benefit by quickly blocking mutually unwanted accounts.



C) Conclusion

In conclusion, I am open to suggestions for better or alternative methods of controlling Twitter Followers from other Twitter users. Please leave feedback and or suggestions in the comments below.