A simple, free way to unfollow unfollowers in order to clean up and maintain an effective Twitter profile.

[label title=”Brand Booster” bg=”#ff9000″ color=”#ffffff”]  Chances are you had the realization that you may be following someone and they aren’t following you back. Of course, celebrities, athletes and high-ranking officials probably don’t care what the majority of us have to say, so they probably won’t ever follow back. But if you decided to unfollow unfollowers, you have to figure out where these people/companies came from in the first place.

Some profiles you followed as a courtesy. Maybe because they followed you? Or maybe you wanted to check out a product or service that was intriguing at one point. But now you’ve just decided to move on with your life.

Spring is around the corner, so it’s time to clean house. Call it what you will: unfollow unfollowers, prune my followers, drop some weight, whatever. And while there are dozens of options out there that promise all kinds of success with features like auto-deleting unfollowers, daily tracking, graphs, charts and a free bowl of soup, we like to use something that has always worked for us: Friend or Follow.

Friend or Follow was founded in 2008 by Dusty Reagan, a long-haired fella who was tired of people not following him back. The website does what it says and still exists today despite constant changes of Twitter’s API that forced other similar websites offline. That’s the simple background, so let’s get to brass tacks:

[heading border=”#FD8100″ color=”#444444″ style=”1″]How to Unfollow Unfollowers on Twitter[/heading]

Friend or Follow is loaded with features, but if you’re looking to simply unfollow unfollowers, here is how you do so:

Step 1. Head to the Friend or Follow website and register for an account. (Don’t worry, they won’t fill your email box with crap).

Step 2. Once you’ve confirmed your registration through email, log into the site and get to work.

Step 3. Right away, you’ll see an explosion of your followers (see image below). Here is where you customize what you want to do. You can explore different ways of showing your followers, and of course there are added features if you choose to upgrade your account. But we found a simple way to cut the dead weight.

Step 4. View style: Keep as is, you can see the faces and that’s all you need.

Step 5. Sort by: Click the ‘Last Tweet’ option.

Step 6. Show these types of users: Leave all of these buttons as-is (so they’re pressed)

Step 7. Bulk jobs and Export: Great features, but you have to upgrade your membership if you want to use (but it’s much faster!)

Step 8. Once that’s done, click to the LAST page of your list. Now you’re looking at the end of the list showing the person who doesn’t follow you (none of them do) but who has tweeted the least. When I went in recently, I found that person hadn’t tweeted in a year! So why in the world would I follow them?! We consider that dead weight. Cut em’ loose.

Step 9. Start to unfollow unfollowers! All you have to do is hover over the unfollowers image, view the data and click UNFOLLOW and you’re good to go. Go through each one (if you’re willing to take the time) and click as you go. It’s that easy.

Granted, it’s time consuming to unfollow unfollowers this way. You could pay for a membership and be allowed to click, click, click and just unfollow in bulk if you want. But it’s also nice to know you are manicuring your profile with some thought. It’s fun, actually, because you’ll take a trip down memory lane and try and remember why you ever followed the account in the first place. Some will surprise you, guaranteed. But keep in mind, the majority of these unfollowers you will decide to keep because you actually value the information they provide. So don’t cut em’ loose unless the information they provide isn’t important to you.

[heading border=”#FD8100″ color=”#444444″ style=”1″]Conclusion[/heading]

Keeping a pruned list of followers keeps you more in line with your following. It’s an accurate representation of how you use the platform and it shows other followers that you aren’t just mass-following people just to try to win a follow-back. This post won’t matter for people who buy followers. TweetBrander’s stance on that will come in a later post, but bottom line, we feel if you’re buying followers, you’re missing the point of Twitter and you’re simply looking for popularity. We’ll pick up the debate later, I promise.

Enjoy what Friend or Follow has to offer. Upgrade your account to support them, or at the very least, visit their sponsors ads to learn more about great products and services in the web world.

Please comment below and let us know what system you use to unfollow unfollowers. There are dozens out there. Again, this one has been around for years and does the trick.

Happy unfollowing!