A couple of days ago a wrote a post saying that I had my twitter account suspended. What a monkey wrench that threw in my daily routine. I hadn’t realized how much that had become a part of what I do and how I communicate with my readers now.
I was a little stressed because of two reasons. One: I had spent a lot of time building my twitter followers and didn’t want to just throw away that time invested. Two: I’m enrolled in the Schoemaker Passive Income course and Twitter is going to be the next topic covered! I had actually built a resources that we are going to use and a couple of days before I get to utilize a tool I bought and paid for in time… I got my twitter account suspended.
So first, why did my twitter account get suspended? For being too aggressive following other people. Me? Aggressive? I would have used the term “Pro-active” but whatever. As the case may be, I thought I was shaking hands with a lot of people and if they didn’t want to talk back, then breaking off communication. Those actions as seen by Twitter are breaking the rules.
While twitter does not put a number on how many people you can follow and unfollow before you get your twitter account suspended, my feeling is that it’s the automated software you need to stay away from.
Everything was fine until I thought I would be “Efficient”. Thats when I logged in to find that my twitter account was suspended and none of my witty antics, blog posts, or other 140 character mouth farts were getting out to the world.
So What Can You Do If You Twitter Account Is Suspended?
1. If you can still log in but just can’t use your account to post tweets, then the first thing to do is fill out a ticket. Actually, the VERY first thing you should do is go for a walk so you don’t fly off the handle and come off like an idiot when you lose it. No one is going to want to help you if you just lay into them off the hop. So chill for a bit, use the time to check the rules and see what it is you might have done. Then go and start apologizing.
2. Fill in your twitter support request ticket here. I said what I thought it might be (I was right.) That I was sorry (I was) and how much I wanted my twitter account suspension lifted (I really, really did).
3. You’ll get a generic reply back most likely. I found the reply confusing so I restated what I had said in the first part of the ticket and asked for further communication. I didn’t really get it so I tried something else. While filling out the ticket is not what got my twitter suspension lifted, I do believe that going through the proper channels first, covers the basic ground so it can’t hurt.
4. Here is where you are either going to make or break it. A while back I thought I would have two separate twitter accounts. One for only fitness stuff and another for everything else so that my readers here wouldn’t be getting tweets about electronic dance music AND fitness. It was too much to maintain both twitter accounts so welcome to the electronic music, travel and fitness blog:-) At any rate, a second account DID come in handy. It’s a back up for communication. I’m a big fan of double redundancy failure methods since the military… I thought is WAS unloaded!
I twitted @ginger and asked if she had any suggestions on how I would be able to get my twitter account suspension lifted. THIS IS WHERE YOU HOLD YOUR BREATH. You’ll either get some help or be banished from the land of twitter. I was lucky and got my twitter account suspension lifted.
5. Do the happy dance.. my twitter account is now back.
So What’s The Moral Of The Story?
Don’t Do Drugs… sorry, wrong post. The moral of the story is that unless you want your twitter account suspended after spending a lot of time developing a voice and twitter following then don’t use automated follow software. A couple of reasons for that. One: You could get your twitter account suspended. Two: You end up following people that in no way interest you. Three: You end up with Japanese and Russian tweets in your time line that you can’t understand.
Hope that helps.
Hi Ray, this is a great post – full of great step-by-step advice. While I hope I never have to deal with this, the fact of the matter is that anybody’s account anywhere can be taken down for virtually nay reason.
I thank you so much for posting this! I’m going to favorite this one all over the place b/c everybody needs to know how to do this! Bookmarking it, too, in the case of WHEN I blow it and do something foolish
(Not to imply that you did anything foolish – a lot of folks use software to streamline their operations.)
Thanks Bill, I appreciate that. Hope all is going well over at your site. Looks like quite a few people are getting account suspensions. I just read this morning that Shoemoney got his suspended but was back up in a few hours.
Let me know how the Shoemoney series goes.
Will do Bill. It’s getting interesting now dealing with different options for arbitrage. It’s outside the norm for me with a fitness site so it’s exciting to learn new income methods.
Same deal happend to me, do you have any idea how much time until the twitter account is validated again ? thanks
i git suspended yesterday im 15 years old and tend to tweet about my idols and my youtube video i feel that i may have broken one of the rules about sending to many links but i didnt know it was a rule an its not like i sent a threat it was just a mistake im really upset beacuse i worked really hard on my followers and had celebrities followin me doya think i have a chance of gettin my account bak and wen u got yours did u get your followers restored pls reply on my email and thnx soo much *fingers crossed*
Hi Courtney, I got mine back by doing what I said in the article.
hi, i have had mine suspended for the same reason- apparently i do aggressive following, i have had the reply back after waiting 3 weeks. What do you reccomend i do now? Tweet @ginger? how can she help to get my account restored? I really want my account back soon.
Megan, its been a while since this happened and all I can tell you is what I did as stated above.
Hey, Ryan. Thanks for this post, It really helps me. Twitter has suspended my account but I can log in. It’s saying that I didn’t type my password correctly and I had to try it again, again and again but I still can’t log in. What should I do? Thanks.