October 28, 2010

225 Most Influential Twitter Users Who Follow Back

As Twitter hits its stride and emerges as a juggernaut in social media, the top users on the site are distancing themselves from the pack. The race to 1,000,000 followers will be achieved in a few months by some accounts. With such strong followings, many new or inactive Twitter users may not think that there are top accounts that will follow them back.

On the contrary, there are many. In fact, many users with tens of thousands of followers will follow just about everyone back. Some use tools to automatically follow anyone who follows them. Others actually go through and manually add their new followers. Regardless of the method, these 237 accounts will most likely follow you back, even if you’re a Twitter newbie.

How to Use this List

Regardless of what stage you are in Twitter, if your goal is to accumulate active followers, the people on this list are good for that. Most on the list are active and interact with their followers on a daily basis. They retweet to their followers when they find something interesting on or off Twitter and many of them post high-quality tweets.

Some do not, and you’ll be able to identify the spammers and self-serving users from what appears in your stream. This list has not been validated for quality (maybe a future blog post) but rather to help new and experienced users grow their followers.

Unfortunately, I did the list backwards. Anyone who wants to grow their Twitter account should start from the bottom and work their way up, adding all 237 either all at once or spread out over time. The advantage of adding from this list is two-fold:

Obviously, as these users have demonstrated a willingness to follow those who follow them, it gives you a likely additional follower.

The side-benefit of adding from this list is that once you follow them, your account will, for a short period of time, be at the top of their followers list. Many users build their Twitter followers by adding the followers of users such as these, so being at the top increases your account’s exposure and the number of opportunities for other users to follow you.

NOTE: This list is getting somewhat out of date. You will find that a couple of the accounts have been suspened or the user has changed policy and no longer follows back. However, I am in the process of updating the list, so that all of the list members will be verified as active and as following back.

100,000+ Followers

50,000-100,000 Followers

40,000-50,000 Followers

30,000-40,000 Followers

20,000-30,000 Followers

10,000-20,000 Followers

TIP: To make members of this list easier to follow, my good friend @tomanderson8166 will have the updated list in realtime soon, as Twitter List @tomanderson8166/shakers-who-follow-back for anyone to follow. As of 10-29-1010 the list is under construction and verification with around 210+ VIP members. I expect he will have the whole list entirly posted within a couple of days.

This blog does not condone “Twitter Follower Spam” or whatever you would like to call the practice of adding a ton of followers, unfollowing them later, and adding more in a vicious cycle of growth, but hey, it works, and many people do it. This is just a resource to help users at every level build their accounts as quickly as they would like.

Posted By: Tom Retterbush

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