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
-
Twitter Analytics
We are looking for top engagers for one of our clients - anyone know of any good resources besides twitter analytics and followerwonk?
Social Media | | CGR-Creative0 -
Twitter cards - one account, various domains?
Hi guys, I have a number of events run by the same company, all with their own websites. For a number of reasons, these individual events don't have their own social channels. Instead, the company's main social channels are used to promote the events wherever possible. I want to implement twitter card markup into each of the sites and associate the markup with the company's main twitter account. Does anyone know whether it's possible to get twitter cards approved for one account across multiple domains? I'd hate to apply for one site using the account, only to find out I can't apply for others! So before I venture into the unknown, was hoping someone could shed some light on this. Cheers 🙂
Social Media | | cos20300 -
Who are my Twitter followers?
I'd like to know how many of my twitter followers are other businesses and how many are individual customers. Is there a tool for this?
Social Media | | ShearingsGroup0 -
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 -
Just how popular are some #Twitter Groups
Good Morning from 14 degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 As i sat on my grassy knoll puffing on a pipe overlooking the English country Land I wondered... just how do you measure the volume of users using hash tag twitter groups.... or put another way imagine you say to a client "Ok one idea is to get this friday meal deal promoted on #FF" The client then says... "So how many twitter users use the #FF" It a blunt but legit question & one I couldnt answer right now. So my question is please... "Is there a tool to measure frequency of use with regards to twitter hash tag groups" Thanks in advance 🙂
Social Media | | Nightwing0 -
Youtube and twitter
Does anyone have an idea how long it takes for the business profile to show up on youtube and twitter? I created profiles yesterday around mid afternoon. I searched for both today and they do not show up just yet. Thanks!
Social Media | | hawkvt10 -
Twitter campaign - need some feedback
Hi I am helping my wife optimize e-com site selling childrens clothing. I am learning SEO from scratch and have no real computer background (physician IRL). Been doing okay - member here for less then 2 months and are ranking 12th and 14th for 2 main keywords (frontpage) and 4 other keywords on first page (producer names on separate pages) (6th -9th spot). All of course absolutely whitehat. I havent done a twitter campaign yet. just recently opened twitter account but have 3 or 4 followers willing to retweet ( they all have 700-1000 followers in right segment). I have very limited twitter knowledge. Here is my idea and just shoot at it if you think i should do it otherwise: it will be in norwegian but ill do it in english just for you 🙂 follow @companyname(epleskrinet) #childrensclothing (which is name i use for company on facebook) and retweet and take part to have your chance to win a 'giftcard' of x USD. (www.epleskrinet.no) I am planning to put a box/picture referring to competition on frontpage. Feel free to critique me, thanks for help.
Social Media | | danlae0