Regaining Twitter
-
Our Twitter account had been hijacked by an ex-employee who refused to give it back. However we filed for copyright infringement and got access of our Twitter account back. The sad part is that Twitter could not leep our followers intact and we lost our fan base of over 30k followers. Now that we have control of the account, how should we go about regaining our followers? Just to give the community a better idea i'd like to point out that we are a leading news organization (dawn.com) of Pakistan. (Yes, we have internet and no we don't ride on camels!).
We posted a message on our FB account that has an even greater following but didn't get a good response as most followers on FB are local whereas 70% of our readership comes from the US alone! So how would you suggest regaining followers and also, is it better to operate an RSS feed or manually select the links to share on Twitter.
Thanks!
-
this is a good idea
-
Rishad, what did you end up doing in this case? I'm interested in hearing the answer, and if it makes for a good case study, you might think about submitting a YOUmoz post about it.
-
Ouch! My suggetion like others here on the forums: create a press release saying how you were ruined by an evil employee and throw your twitter name all over, make it almost viral to help you?
-
Once the article is up and running we can republish it to maybe even get you more followers - and then you can write another article about THAT!!
Win+win+win I think!
-
I'm not sure if the follower list is still available anywhere or not. But honestly there isn't much in the way of a operational way to approach this that I know of. I think Thomas and Dejan have said it best. The one thing I might add though - is if the follower list is still intact somewhere, perhaps tied to a different account (doesn't sound like it so this is a long shot) you can use export.ly to get a .csv of all of the followers the account had. You may be able to write a script but I'd suggest doing it manually - to contact them letting them know they need to re-follow and help spread the word.
Sorry about that
Going forward a tool like Cotweet is really nice b/c you can give people access without giving them control. I think HootSuite may offer similar functionality.
-
It seems there are a lot of sections of your site this could be apropriate for...perhaps a blog entry even rather than a full blown press statement? Might sit easier with the editorial board perhaps...
-
easy, show them how many links came to the site via twitter over a month/year period. That should get a bosses attention.
-
hmmm...if only I am able to convince the editorial!
-
This looks like a perfect news story for Dawn. If you do not have a list of the Twitter followers, release a press statement or article stating what happened and ask people to re-join.
-
Man, the list was lost courtesy of Twitter. They said, they could only transfer the username and not the followers. Although the hijacker was operating an RSS, we wanted more control and wanted to integrate it with FB and do other things. Mailing list, yea we have one for online subscribtions and not for the Twitter followers we had previously!
-
How was the list lost. Was the account terminated and re-created or did the hijacker affect the user base? Do you have a mailing list? That would seem the easiest way to regain the lost user base and give you a chance to wash the list as well and retain relevant followers only.
-
Hi Rishad,
To answer your second question first: I definitely prefer a manually curated list on twitter. Alternatively you can have one main twitter account with a currated list + a number of automated twitter accounts that send feeds from your vertical news segments.
I would simply start using your Twitter account the way it is supposed to be, and I am sure your followers will get back eventually. To speed things up, you could consider press releases, news stories and/or sponsored tweet that mentions your Twitter account was hijacked but is back - stronger than ever.
Good luck!
Thomas
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hi! The same function you have on twitter ( how you can see their flooewrs) do you have it for blogs?
Hi! The same function you have on twitter ( how you can see their flooewrs) do you have it for blogs?Describe your question in detail. The more information you give, the better! It helps give context for a great answer.
Social Media | | JohannaPihl0 -
Content Marketing and Twitter
Hello, I'd like to improve how I use twitter for pushing a piece of content. Here's what I am planning to do currently: First, we created a useful piece of content for a niche where we'll be appealing to the humanitarian side of thing. Nothing like this piece of content is on the web. The subject is not mouthwateringly attractive to other websites, but it is good, very useful, authoritative and uses the information we have in our niche. For Twitter, we plan to pick a website carefully that could use our content and 1. of course follow that site on twitter 2. Retweet 2 or 3 relevant good tweets the site has put out. If the person I want to contact has a twitter account, retweet some of his too. 3. Tweet a general tweet about a good article or blog post the site has with a link to the site and the article. 4. Tweet at a specific person in the site's company (or to the general twitter account if there isn't anyone specific) asking if they need help with content if it is well written and useful, then later tweeting introducing our article. Email will also be used. I'm really new to using twitter for content marketing, any help is appreciated. Facebook liking/sharing as well as blog comment posting along with adding to g plus circles will also be used. Thanks.
Social Media | | BobGW1 -
Do twitter profile links in bio pass juice?
Links that are added in the "Website" field in a twitter profile are nofollow. However, links added to the "Bio" section are dofollow. This has to mean these links are passing juice correct?
Social Media | | eli.boda0 -
Connecting Twitter accounts?
Does anyone know if it is possible to connect 2 separate Twitter accounts? The marketing department in my company set up the official Twitter feed. However, one of the employees took it upon themselves to set up another one and built up a good following. Now a lot of people are getting confused to which one is the official one. It would be great it we could merge the two, but I've been looking all morning and can't seem to find a way. Any help?
Social Media | | AAttias0 -
Twitter and Link Juice
Sorry if I am late to the party with this, but I thought Twitter stopped giving sites link juice? I have been running some sites through Open Site Explorer and there main links are coming from Twitter. I have other sites who are on Twitter and nothing comes up. Why is that? Thanks!
Social Media | | ClickIt0 -
Google plus, Twitter and Facebook link - does it help?
Hello, I was wondering, does it help if I publish a link to a new page on my website on my Facebook-, Google + and Twitter-Account - even if noone reposts it? Thanks Polyniki
Social Media | | polyniki0 -
How much weight do Twitter Lists carry in Google's determination of user influence?
I have come across a number of Twitter users that have 1000+ Followers, and they typically follow 1000+ people. I've noticed as of late that many of these people are found on fewer lists. I also know that many twitter users are selective about who they actually allow in their main twitter stream and therefore create lists to manage who they follow. Any thoughts on if /how twitter lists contribute to a user's authority and/or influence from the SERP's perspective?
Social Media | | Thos0030