Here’s the deal on that.  You are being spammed because of some of your hashtags or words used in your tweets. 

NO – never buy followers. YOU could be penalized and have your twitter account shut down by twitter. 

I advised a client against buying followers but he did it anyway and the result was 1,000 followers who where porn hawkers. You cannot image the mess that made for his business. He had to shut down his twitter account and build a new one. Don’t do it, for any reason.

If you use hashtags with these words: follow, followback, teamfollowback (and variations of that) you’ll begin to get the followers you DO NOT WANT. These are ones who are spamming you now.  You may have followed one of those accounts unknowingly or thought it was harmless. It’s not! Follow carefully!

I found if I followed one musician I started getting rap people who use the most foul language following me and of course, I don’t want that, you know? No one want’s that for a business or even personal account where business might be involved.  

I followed one actress, and suddenly had all kinds of media garbage about Hollywood that I simply abhor, beginning to follow me. 

It’s not really a crap shoot, just DO NOT follow these people back and never, ever, buy followers.

SORRY – It looks like I’m spamming this thread but I am just concerned!  At your twitter account you don’t have a link to your website or blog in your profile. You should add that right away. I’ll look some more but may send anything else privately so I am not LOOKING like I’m overtaking your thread here.

Have a great day

@supereb I don’t use those hashtags, and def won’t now. While I am careful on who I follow, I likely did pick one of those up inadvertently.

I didn’t think paying was a good idea. I’ve found even people I’ve followed for good reasons don’t provide good info or inspiration. There is enough clutter in my life; I don’t need more

Mass follow purchasing is the worst idea I’ve heard in a long time. I came across a fellow who said his goal was to have “X thousand followers by the end of the year” and let’s just say it was a crazy amount. I’m sure he’d be all over the paying for Twitter follower scam. And he’d be kidding not only his base of true followers but most importantly he’d be kidding himself. 

And to anyone who thinks you have to get 50,000 followers or more to get on a bigger radar, I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read in the last month featuring entrepreneurs who had nowhere near 10,000 followers. Don’t believe the hype.

thanks for posting this question, Joan, I’ve never heard of people selling followers and EN, great warning! thanks @joanmuschampfagnani @supereb

@supereb @joanmuschampfagnani

There is some great advice here. I absolutely agree that buying followers for any platform is useless.  Although you might extend your reach to a new market, its would probably end poorly. Quality over quantity is the way to go! You want to follow and be followed by people who you think will positively impact your thinking or business. This is a much better platform for people find more followers because its innate ability to filter out uninterested people.  Presumably, we are all on here to because we have genuine interest in Social Media.  

Once again, E N Brown gave great information.  I can sense her fervor and experience in the matter!

Feel free to tweet me though!

Tweet @GoOmnibeat

Good advice given so far as usual. However, I haven’t seen anyone mention some basics of what to do with those who follow you without you first following them. In other words, do you automatically follow back everyone who follows you?

I would highly recommend you be selective about following back, especially if you want to avoid some of the issues mentioned. Don’t forget you have a number of options with those followers who just kinda pop up in your list of followers.

You can follow them back, which is a good idea if they fit in with your objectives. You can also report them as spam, or block them. I don’t recommend doing either of those unless you’re pretty sure they aren’t legitimate users. One good way to tell is if they haven’t tweeted at all (usually a bot account) or very few tweets posted vs. high numbers of people they are following.

There are lots of bogus twitter accounts and I’m not sure you can get rid of all of them, especially if you’re fairly active; but, if you are diligent in your follow back procedures that will definitely help.

Have you ever heard someone describe Twitter as robots talking to robots? This is why. This idea of trying to reach a certain number of followers is not an advisable strategy. I have one client who does just that and not only is he getting a lot of robots listening, but he is addicted to the numbers and is not spending otherwise valuable time making real connections. Though I do think Tweepi or a tool like it to follow multiple people and try to grow quickly CAN, with careful monitoring, be included in your strategy. Just like   @supereb states, you do not want the wrong people cluttering up your stream. 

Did you all hear about when Chris Brogan unfollowed everyone in a day. http://www.chrisbrogan.com/unfollow/