Set it and forget it” website traffic is a dream of every marketer.
The only trouble with that dream is the fact that it doesn’t always play nicely with reality.
Especially when it comes down to social media traffic.
And even more specifically, Twitter traffic.
Twitter has recently restricted use of its API significantly, causing several Twitter tools to follow/unfollow users to shut down.
My favorite Twitter tool, Tweet Adder, which I’ve been using and recommending for the past two years, had also gone through a major overhaul, removing most automation features that made it a social media traffic generation dream come true.
Which Twitter tools are still worth their salt?
Which ones provide the most time-efficient way to get more Twitter followers?
Which Twitter tools allow you to get more Twitter followers at the best price – the best being free or as close to it as possible?
Yes, we are on a quest to find the best Twitter tools to get more Twitter followers.
Best Twitter Tools Criteria
To generate traffic from Twitter, we need more responsive followers who are interested in what we have to say.
How do we get such Twitter followers as efficiently as possible?
The criteria I’ll be looking at when exploring the tools to get more Twitter followers are as follows:
1. How well can I target new followers?
This is not a numbers game.
Ten targeted and engaged Twitter followers might help you to carry your business message a lot farther than 100 or even 1,000 Twitter followers who could care less about what you have to say.
2. How quickly can I follow them with each tool?
Here’s Twitter’s official policy on Automated Following and Un-Following:
The only auto-following behavior Twitter allows is automated or bulk follow-back. This refers to following a user after they have followed you. Please review our Follow Rules and Best Practices for a detailed discussion of following recommendations.
Also note that per the Twitter Rules, “get followers fast” applications and services are not allowed. Do not surrender your username and password to them, or otherwise grant access to or control of your account to any third party apps that claim to provide such services.
And just in case you missed this very important point:
Also note that per the Twitter Rules, “get followers fast” applications and services are not allowed.
I used to love using Tweet Adder to automate some of the tedious tasks of getting more Twitter followers: following and unfollowing, to be more precise.
To be clear, I was never a fan of fully automating the process. I still fired up my Tweet Adder on a daily basis manually setting it to follow/unfollow a certain number of people. I called it “manual automation”.
However, with new Twitter API rules, automatically getting more Twitter followers is just not possible any longer.
So now I am on the quest to get the best tool to make the task of following/unfollowing people as quick as possible – without full automation.
3. How easily can I unfollow people?
Why do you need to unfollow anyone?
Simply put, sooner or later you’ll have to unfollow those who don’t follow you to be able to follow more people.
Twitter daily following limit is 1,000 per day.
Please note that this is a technical account limit only, and there are additional rules prohibiting aggressive following behavior. Details about following limits and prohibited behavior are on the Follow Limits and Best Practices page.
Up to a limit of 2,000 followers that is.
Once an account is following 2,000 other users, additional follow attempts are limited by account-specific ratios, i.e. you can follow 10% more than the number of your followers.
In other words, if 2,000 people are following you, you can follow 2,200, after which you have to wait till more people follow you (10% more).
However, you can be waiting forever till your follower ratio catches up with the number of people you are following.
My rule of thumb: if someone doesn’t follow me back after 5 days that usually means they are not interested in what you have to say. In this case, you need to unfollow them so that you can follow more people who are more interested in your tweets.
Here’s how it works:
I’ll be looking for a tool that allows me to unfollow with ease.
Twitter Tools to Get More Twitter Followers
After looking into several Twitter tools that offer follow/unfollow features, my final contenders for the best Twitter tools are:
- Tweet Adder
- Brand Chirp
- Tweepi
Let’s take a look at what each tool has to offer, how they stack up against each other, as well as my final recommendations.
Tweet Adder (Paid)
Let’s start with my old favorite: Tweet Adder.
Those of you who’ve been around Traffic Generation Café for a while or are getting my free Bite-Size Traffic Hacks email series know that Tweet Adder used to be my to-go tool for Twitter traffic generation.
Since Twitter API restrictions though, Tweet Adder had to make some significant changes to comply with Twitter rules, which basically turned it from a leader in Twitter automation to just another tool to do the same basic tasks every other tool does as well.
Take a look:
Tweet Adder Version 3 – retired as of May 24, 2013
The orange arrows are pointing to the Tweet Adder features that allowed you to follow/unfollow Twitter followers automatically.
Take a look at the new Tweet Adder version 4:
Let’s take a look at how the new Tweet Adder measures up against the three best Twitter tool criteria set above.
Tweet Adder Pros and Cons
Pros
More of an “all-in-one” Twitter tool.
Offers follow/unfollow (albeit the recent removal of most automated functions).
Can add RSS feeds, send DMs (under “thank you messages”), schedule tweets/retweets, etc.
Great follower targeting.
Can research Twitter trends.
Allows to follow/unfollow now or save unlimited number of names for later follow/unfollow.
More economical Twitter tool: one-time price vs monthly subscription.
BIG ONE: So far Tweet Adder seems to be the only Twitter tool to offer running multiple Twitter accounts through proxies.
Why use proxies with Tweet Adder?
You and I know that we are using Tweet Adder to ultimate add value to our new Twitter followers, not to spam them.
Twitter doesn’t know it.
So if they catch too many following/unfollowing requests from the same IP address (yours), they might ban you first and ask questions later.
How many is too many?
Anyone’s guess.
I’ve been able to follow thousands of folks per day without getting into trouble, and then some of my readers got banned after following 50 people by hand.
So now I use proxies just to be on the safe side.
Cons
Most follow/unfollow tasks are manual (although it’s hard to count it as a con since all Twitter tools have to comply with Twitter term of service and not allow any automation).
Price: used to be a bargain because of its automation features, but now Tweet Adder is a bit pricey for what it has to offer.
Is Tweet Adder My Recommendation for the Best Twitter Tool?
Allow me to say first that I am still pretty bitter that Tweet Adder had to turn off most of its automation features.
For those of us who were using the automation features to leverage our time and not to spam anyone on Twitter, this was a major blow.
That said, it’s not Tweet Adder’s fault.
They chose to do the right thing (i.e. comply with Twitter new terms of service) and good for them.
How does it position them among other Twitter tools?
After taking a deep breath and comparing it to other tools to get more Twitter followers, I was relieved to see that in many ways Tweet Adder is still ahead of its competition.
Here are the features that make is stand out in my eyes:
- Running multiple Twitter accounts by proxy – this is huge. As far as I see, Tweet Adder is still the only tool to offer this feature.
- Combining follow/unfollow features with Twitter management elements, like adding RSS feeds, scheduling tweets, automated welcome messages, automated retweets, etc.
- Even though the number of features went down and the price remained the same, compared to the other Twitter tools I analyzed, Tweet Adder is still ahead: one-time fee always beats a monthly subscription as far as I am concerned.
So overall, yes – I still recommend and use Tweet Adder as my best Twitter tool of choice.
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But don’t take my word for it; let’s take a look at other candidates for the best Twitter tool.
BrandChirp.com (Paid)
Brand Chirp is very similar to Tweet Adder – not only it allows you to follow/unfollow Twitter users, but also do certain tweet management tasks.
Does it do it as well as Tweet Adder?
Let’s take a look:
Brand Chirp Pros and Cons
Pros
Shows how active prospective friends are (the last time they tweeted). There’s no reason to follow people who haven’t tweeted in a while.
More of an “all-in-one” Twitter tool.
Offers follow/unfollow, as well as adding RSS feeds, brand monitoring, and scheduled tweets.
Great follower targeting.
Does have a one-time payment option vs a monthly subscription; a plus in my eyes.
Multiple accounts (could be unlimited; I am not entirely sure).
Cons
Search by keywords is extremely slow.
Overall, fewer features than Tweet Adder at a steeper price.
Monthly subscription – adds up pretty quickly (unless you want to spend $200 up front).
Is Brand Chirp My Recommendation for the Best Twitter Tool?
After closely examining all the features, I think Tweet Adder still takes the lead over Brand Chirp: more features, less expensive, and more stable.
Tweepi.com (Free/Paid)
Tweepi allows you to discover and follow new users, unfollow users, find and unfollow inactive users and block followers who send spam.
Please keep in mind that at the moment, Tweepi Premium accounts are linked on per Twitter account basis. If you wish to upgrade more than one account, you’ll need to do so for each one.
Here’s the rundown on the features you can expect to get with Tweepi.com.
Tweepi Pros and Cons
Pros
You can follow other users’ followers or friends.
You can follow semi-automatically (from 20 to 200 people at a time depending on your account).
You can “flush” the unfollows.
You can cleanup inactives.
Can run several Twitter accounts for free.
Cons
Better follower targeting is only available with premium accounts.
Premium accounts get expensive: $7.49 – $14.99 per month per account.
Can’t do any kind of tweeting (like adding RSS feeds, retweeting, DMs, etc)
Is Tweepi My Recommendation for the Best Twitter Tool?
I think Tweepi is pretty mighty for a free Twitter tool.
For those of you who are new to Twitter or still learning the ropes on how to put it to good use in your business, I think free Tweepi is a great choice.
It allows you to test the Twitter waters without any financial commitment.
However, if you are serious about Twitter traffic generation, I wouldn’t pay for their monthly subscription plan. I think it’s just too much to pay for multiple accounts and the fact that it doesn’t do much of anything else (any kind of Twitter management) makes it even more expensive.
Choose Tweet Adder in that case.
More Twitter Tools
The Twitter Tools listed above are the ones I’d strongly consider for getting more Twitter followers.
Of course, there are many more.
After a while, they all start looking the same.
Most of them offer a minimal free service and charge a monthly fee for more – and you always need more since you can’t really do much with their free options.
Here are just some of the Twitter tools I ran into:
Manageflitter.com
Manageflitter.com offers to unfollow 100 people per day for free – anything beyond that, including any following features will cost you $12 per month and up.
Granted, you can increase the unfollow limit to up to 2,000, but without being able to follow users, it doesn’t do you any good.
Justunfollow.com
Justunfollow.com is yet another unfollow tool that will let you to unfollow people and follow back those who followed you, but not follow new users.
Friendorfollow.com
Friendorfollow.com offers limited free features and the ability to unfollow/follow back, but not search/follower new users.
Best Twitter Tool Marketing Takeaway
Whether we like it or not, we have to adapt to changes.
Recent Twitter API limitations were just one such change.
Getting Twitter followers will never be as easy as it used to be; true.
But getting more Facebook fans was never that easy to begin with, yet we managed just fine, right?
I’ve given you four pretty darn good choices to do well with getting more Twitter followers, establishing your brand, and getting more Twitter traffic back to your site.
Twitter can be an incredible traffic generator (it always has been for Traffic Generation Café); it’s time to figure out how to make it work for YOU.
