Twitter’s 110% rule (that says that the number of people you can follow is a maximum of the greater of 2000 or 110% of the number of people you are following) creates a problem for marketers. The top way to generate new followers of your own is to follow others. One way to increase their followers without bumping up against this limit is to maintain a ratio of followers to followees of around 1:1. But this is easier said than done unless you have some specific strategies in place to manage it.

Refollow is a fantastic, free online service that allows you to dismiss users from your Twitter account in order to manage that ratio. The tool lets you view all of the Twitter users who you are following, those who are following you, as well as groups of users based on particular criteria. They are presented in a grid of icons which display information about each user.

Unless you are already a celebrity or of a status where people are naturally going to follow you, you are going to have to manage your following list. The first thing you are going to have to do is eliminate those users you follow who do not follow you back (not counting people you genuinely enjoy reading). Refollow makes that process easy by showing you exactly who is not following you back and allowing you to mass-unfollow them all at once.

Another option is simply to buy users. There are many options available for doing this, so I won’t recommend any particular one here. It seems a bit unseemly. And the practice does violate the concept of using Twitter as a platform to communicate with those you find interesting. However…business is business, and if this is something you need to do to get past the 110% limit in order to keep growing your account, then it is a viable option.

If you can create a genuine buzz within the Twitter universe about yourself based on the quality or entertainment value of your updates, then you might not even have to worry about any of these options. If people flock to your account because they are genuinely interested in what you have to say, there will be no need to manipulate the ratio of followers to those you are following.

Most likely, however, at least in the beginning, you will have to take some specific steps to keep that ratio in line to grow your follower base much past 2000.