How to Spring Clean Your Twitter Account
April 10, 2013
Do you feel that? Spring is in the air, people!
Soon you’ll be cleaning your desk, reviewing your calendar, organizing your inbox, and clearing any cobwebs that built up during the five months you spent shivering and clutching a Dunkin Donuts coffee (or maybe that’s just a Boston thing?). I’m personally going to spend some time spring cleaning the social media accounts I manage, starting with Twitter, so I thought I’d share a few tips to help you do the same.
I find that with Twitter, it’s all too easy to let the weeds grow. You follow that person, authorize this application, forget about the spambot that started following you last week (Quick Tip: @HotGuy4U is not actually a hot guy for you), and before you know it you start feeling overwhelmed by the junk you have to wade through to find anything good.
In no particular order, here are three things you can do to easily spring clean your Twitter account and start fresh.
1. Review Your App Permissions
While doing some research for this post, I came across a Lifehacker article that suggests cleaning out your Twitter app permissions. I did this recently and was reminded of some of the dumb applications with access to my account.
To clean these up, head to your Twitter “Settings” (drop-down menu in the upper-right hand corner) and click “Apps” on the left sidebar. You should be able to see a list of the apps that have your account permissions – you can “Revoke Access” on any you don’t use.
2. Use Handy Twitter Tools
There are a multitude of Twitter tools out there designed to help you manage your account. Pretty much all of them will require access to your account (see above), but now you know how to clear them out when you’re done.
My favorite tool so far has been Tweepi, which lets you do things like mass-flush unfollowers, clean up inactive users, reciprocate followers, and force people to unfollow you. While Tweepi worked for me, it’s far from the only option — check out this great Mashable article for other suggestions.
3. Give Your Profile a Facelift
In a previous post, I suggested five social media tactics you can try right now to boost your presence, the first of which was to brand yourself. Take some time to reevaluate your handle (I’m looking at you, @HotGuy4U), photo, profile information, background, etc. Make sure that your Twitter profile accurately represents your interests and what followers can expect from you.