Social media is a constant battle of the survival of the fittest, and Twitter (now X) is no exception. One of the most common questions we see is, “Why am I losing followers on Twitter (X)?”
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at some of the most common reasons for losing Twitter followers and provide suggestions about how to counteract the problem.
Table des matières
1. Account Housekeeping:
Reason #1: Twitter's Spring Cleaning
Twitter is often overrun with bots and spam accounts. Understandably, these accounts negatively affect the quality of the experience, so Twitter has to keep deactivating spam accounts. These can number thousands or millions every time they hold a cleanup session. X’s spam policy puts it as follows:
But how does that affect your account? The most common strategy for these accounts is to follow as many different accounts as possible. They may post legitimate content for a while to gain followers, then start posting spam or leaving spam comments on other people’s posts.
Because these accounts follow people, and hundreds or even thousands of them may follow a single account, when Twitter deactivates the accounts, it can lead to a significant drop in your follower tallies.
Solution
While it may seem counterintuitive, losing bots and spam followers is good.
Try to focus on gaining new interactive followers. It will improve how the algorithm presents you to new people. It’s also better to have fewer (but more engaged) followers than many that don’t engage.
Reason #2: Unreliable Follower Sources
Another reason you may be losing a lot of followers is that you bought Twitter followers (which is rarely an effective strategy).
The accounts that follow you are often created only to follow other accounts. However, they don’t offer any form of engagement and may unfollow you soon afterward.
When you buy Twitter followers, Twitter usually classifies these types of accounts as spam accounts and will deactivate them sooner or later.
When X starts deactivating spam accounts, your followers can decline massively and quickly.
Solution
Twitter is doing you a favor by narrowing down the number of inactive followers on your list. Don’t worry about your lost followers; instead, focus on engaging with them and creating valuable content that will draw new followers to your profile.
2. Profile Presentation:
Reason #3: Uninviting Profile Design
If you’re slowly losing followers on Twitter (X), your profile may need a refresh.
Your bio and overall profile presentation must represent who you are and what you stand for.
If your profile has been the same for years or months, your followers may become bored of the existing setup. If you don’t have an engaging profile that pulls in new followers and helps your existing followers to relate to you, you’re likely to see a steady trickle of unfollows.
Solution
The best way to ensure that your following remains engaged and that you’re consistently attracting new followers rather than losing Twitter followers is to keep your profile current and engaging while making sure it reflects your account’s essence.
If you’re selling products or want users to perform specific actions, remember to include CTAs in your bio and keep your profile picture current.
At the same time, ensure that your followers are aware of any changes you make to your profile so they don’t unintentionally unfollow you because they are no longer sure who you are.
3. Content Consistency:
Reason #4: Posting Habits Out of Sync
Consistency is key. If your viewers see too little activity on your page, they may unfollow you because they don’t consider it worthwhile to follow you for sporadic content.
If you post too often, it’s like having someone walking next to you jabbering nonstop in your ear. This can also cause you to lose Twitter followers.
Suppose you change your posting consistency and notice that you’re either retaining more followers or losing more followers than you were before.
In that case, you know that your posting schedule is likely why you’re losing followers on X.
Solution
Once you’ve established that your posting schedule is a problem, look at your number of tweets. If you’re posting 25 tweets daily and consistently losing followers, it may be a sign that you’re posting too often. The opposite is true if you’re posting one or two tweets a day.
If you suspect that you’re posting too often, gradually reduce the number of tweets you post daily. As a starting point, reduce it from 20 to 15 and see if your follower retention improves.
If the opposite is true, gradually increase your tweets from, say, two to six a day and see if you notice any improvement. Once you’ve established the ideal number of tweets for your target audience, simply maintain a schedule of posting about that many times daily.
Reason #5: Losing Your Niche Focus
It is far soon easy to get sucked into conversations that have nothing to do with your general content niche or topic. Examples include political debates or moral and ethical dilemmas like this one:
Unfortunately, whenever you like a tweet that takes a stance on a controversial topic, your followers may see that as an endorsement of a specific stance. If you’re using your account as a business platform, you may start losing followers quite rapidly if you take a stance that they don’t agree with.
Solution
Suppose you want to avoid losing Twitter followers due to disagreements over contentious issues. In that case, it’s best to stay entirely within the niche that your followers can relate to.
Stay away from big-picture issues. For instance, if you’re a health and beauty account, don’t delve into religion, political issues, or other things that may drive away your followers.
In short, stick to what your followers expect from you.
4. Engagement Struggles:
Reason #6: Shadowbanned by Twitter
If Twitter considers your behavior suspicious or potentially damaging to the platform, they may shadowban your account. This term applies to various tools they use to restrict or silence your account visibility.
For instance, if you suddenly start posting and following a lot more than usual, they may detect this as suspicious, particularly if the content is highly promotional. You may lose Twitter followers because people can’t see everything you’re posting in these cases.
Solution
Look at your account from a different account (like a friend’s). If you can’t see your Tweets (or only some of them), you’ve likely been shadowbanned. Fortunately, shadowbans are temporary, and your account will return to normal over time; if it doesn’t, reach out to Twitter directly.
Reason #7: Ignoring Follower Conversations and Neglecting to Follow Back
Lack of engagement is a major reason why accounts start losing followers on Twitter. If your followers consistently leave tags and comments and try to engage with you, but you don’t respond, they will start unfollowing you.
The same is true if you never follow back any of the people that follow you. It creates the impression that your account is aloof and has no real interest in the people trying to engage with you.
Solution
The solution is simple: Engage. You don’t have to respond to every tag, comment, or follow, but you should try to engage with your followers to some degree.
5. Content Delivery:
Reason #8: Hashtag Overload
One reason you could be losing Twitter followers is that you are overusing hashtags. While hashtags can be extremely useful, overloading on them often makes readers feel like you’re more interested in them as numbers than in engaging with them.
If the space your hashtags take up is greater than the amount of content you’re writing, you’re probably overdoing it. Yes, this can lead to people unfollowing your account.
Solution
Fortunately, this is an easy problem to solve. All you have to do is reduce the number of hashtags you use and use only the significant and relevant hashtags that provide value to your followers.
6. Identity Shifts:
Reason #10: Profile Makeover Without Warning
When people spend a lot of time on Twitter or X, they get used to seeing the profile pictures and handles of the accounts they enjoy interacting with. When you suddenly change either of those things without informing your followers (or they miss the memo), you may notice a significant drop in your followers as they mistakenly unfollow you because they’re not sure who you are.
Solution
If you’re planning to major profile overhaul, it’s essential to ensure that your followers remain aware of who you are.
This is best accomplished by placing a note in your bio stating that you once posted under the Twitter handle that you had before. You may also want to do a tweet or several tweets spaced out over a period of time to inform your followers that you have changed your Twitter handle and profile picture, but you will still be producing the same quality content that you were before.
7. Unfollowing Strategies:
Reason #11: Overzealous Unfollowing
For most content creators, a regular newsfeed or Twitter stream purge is required. Some accounts you were following are no longer producing attractive content.
Or, you enter a new phase of your life, and the things that were once important to you no longer seem as significant.
In either case, you’re likely to unfollow accounts. This is usually a good thing, but if you’re unfollowing too many accounts at once, it can lead to a rapid decline in your following.
Wait, how does unfollowing Twitter accounts lead to you losing Twitter followers?
Many of the accounts that follow you likely followed back after you followed them. So, when you start unfollowing accounts en masse, they return the favor.
Solution
The good news about this situation is that the people who simply follow for follow probably aren’t engaging with your content.
Keep unfollowing those accounts that aren’t engaging with you (or vice versa). However, slowly remove those accounts a few at a time over days, weeks, or months. This will help you reduce the massive drop in your following while still giving you the peace of mind and clean newsfeed that you desire.
8. Self-Promotion Balance:
Reason #12: Excessive Self Promotion
As hard as it may be to believe, people don’t like hearing about your product or service all the time. If more than half of your posts are shameless self-promotion, you can easily lose Twitter followers.
Solution
This is an easy problem to solve: simply ensure that at least three-quarters of your posts are valuable content that readers like to see. The remaining quarter of your posts may be self-promotion, but try not to self-promote every day, spacing it out over every couple of days instead. This approach will help your followers feel as if they are valued and not merely a means to an end.
9. Temporary Account Issues:
Reason #13: Missing Phone Verification
Many Twitter users don’t realize it, but not having account backup information can severely affect their account’s overall health. If you’re suddenly losing followers in large numbers, it may be that your account has been temporarily screened.
This is a problem in more ways than one since Twitter may start removing your follower count. In severe cases, they may even show zero followers. Fortunately, it’s simple enough to find out if this is the problem that you’re facing.
View your profile from someone else’s Twitter account, and you’ll be able to see if your account has been temporarily restricted. Twitter will usually also give you a warning telling you that your account has been restricted.
Solution
You can easily solve this problem by filling in the account recovery information from your account settings. Once Twitter has reviewed your newly uploaded information, they will remove the temporary restrictions from your account and will start adding back your follower count.
Final Thoughts
While losing Twitter followers can seem scary, there’s usually a relatively good reason why it happens. The key to getting (and maintaining) many Twitter followers is to keep producing quality content that readers want to see.
Try not to get sucked into the side of Twitter where everything is about promotion and getting ahead. And, if you really want to get a boost that helps you get ahead, try an organic targeting tool instead.
Twenvy is a brilliant option because it offers you a free trial. It also doesn’t contravene Twitter’s terms of service, meaning you can increase organic followers with no risk.
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