How To Grow Your Followers With Follow Threads & Avoid Getting Cheated
If you're part of the blogger scene on twitter, you have probably participated in a couple of follow threads yourself. The problem with these threads is that, when you do whatever action you're supposed to- whether that's subscribing to everyone's blog or following others on Instagram- some people JUST DON'T RECIPROCATE. It's very unfair and extremely frustrating when you spend so much time trying to support others in hopes of getting support back, but people don't do what they're supposed to.
In this post, I'm going to give you some tips based off of my own experiences with follow threads to help you maximize your use of them while not getting cheated when people don't reciprocate.
Tip #1: Don't follow accounts with extremely disproportionate follower to following ratios
If you are participating in a follow thread for a platform where you can see how many followers someone has and how many people someone is following (e.g. Instagram, Twitter, etc.), do not, I repeat, DO NOT follow someone who has something like 8,000 followers and only follows 3,000 people if you are expecting a follow back. If there is a proportionally large numerical difference between the number of people a person follows and how many people follow them, they are probably a) never going to follow you back or b) will follow you just to unfollow you later even if you continue to follow back. Follow people will a relatively balanced follower to following ratio- maybe following at least somewhere around 80% of their follower count.
Tip #2: Make it easy for people to follow you by making your link available and making sure your link works
For example, if you are doing a thread where you reply to the person's tweet after you have followed them, also add the link they would need to use to follow you back in the tweet to make it easy for them to reciprocate. If you are doing a thread that requires you to only like the tweet of the person you followed, subscribed to, etc, make sure the link they would need to use to reciprocate is in your Twitter bio. This way, instead of making them dig through a long thread of replies to find your link or ask you for it, they can easily find it in your bio (which is where most people will go first to find it). And most importantly, make sure your link works because if it doesn't, you are only harming yourself!
Tip #3: Unfollow anyone who does not reciprocate
Despite doing all that you can to avoid the cheaters and make it easier for people to follow you back, the inevitable sometimes still happens and people still don't follow back, but we won't let them get away with it! I am not saying you should or have to unfollow anyone that did not reciprocate, but if they defeated the purpose of the follow thread and you don't care for their content, what's the point? Whenever I do a follow thread, I wait a little while to see who will actually do their job, and then I do spring cleaning of all the people that don't.
For Instagram and Twitter, I have apps that let me mass unfollow people who do not follow me back. I use an app called "unfollow for Twitter" for Twitter as it allows you to unfollow hundreds of people that don't follow back at once by clicking a couple of buttons. I use "Followers for Instagram!" to unfollow people that don't follow me back on Instagram as it unfollows everyone that doesn't follow you at once (but it will slow down when needed to try and prevent you from being flagged on insta).
I use these apps because I do not have the time to comb through who I follow to see who does not follow me back. When you use these apps, I would suggest not using them too excessively so you do not violate any app's terms of conditions and get flagged for spamming.
As for threads that include subscribing to YouTube's, I just try and unsubscribe from people that I do not get notifications from on YouTube for subscribing to me as YouTube does not let you see your subscribers list (so you're working kind of blind in that situation). As for subscribing to people's blogs, I do not have any apps for mass unsubscribing so you would probably have to manually go through and compare who is and isn't subscribed to you. As for liking and commenting threads, you can always take back your like, delete your comment, etc.
I hope my blog post was helpful. Good luck on your threads!