5 Ways to Sort Your Twitter Followers by Country and Location

 Geographic location is very important for a lot of small businesses. Gaining a lot of followers is all well and good, but if you’re a small local business in California and you’re getting mostly followers from Spain, who is going to care? It’s always better to attract, target, and engage with local followers who are more likely to take advantage of your services, and more likely to give you preferential treatment because you’re local to them.

For larger businesses, geographic location is important because you want to know the demographics of your users. You want to be able to see where they’re coming from, so you know how to reach out to them. You also want to be able to use location as a possible filter for fake followers. Now, location isn’t always a sure-fire indicator – heck, it’s not always a good indicator at all – but it’s still worth knowing.

What I’ve done here is come up with five different ways you can compile location and follower data, compare it, and use it to your marketing advantage. Each technique has pros and cons, though by far the biggest con for all of these is having to pay for most of it. See, Twitter doesn’t have any convenient way to do any of this sorting with their built-in analytics, so you have to turn to third party programs, and those tend to cost money. I’ll note costs when I find them, though as with anything you read online, it’s possible they have changed since I wrote this. Feel free to let me know if that’s the case.

Hopefully one or two of these methods of sorting out followers will be helpful to you. I’ve tried to explain how you can gain an advantage from each, though, so test them out and see if they can give your markeitng an edge. check here

1. Put Existing Followers on a Map

Normally, if you would want to put your followers on a map, you would have to do some pretty complicated custom coding with a list of your followers pulled from Twitter and, probably, a Google Maps API. I’m going to skip all of that and just forward you to a service that does it for you. The service in question is TweepsMap.

TweepsMap Website

TweepsMap is a free service available to anyone, with only a few restrictions. They have a pretty unique geographically-centered platform that starts by mapping your followers to location. From there, it allows you to run hashtag searches, set up a tweet alert, track follows and unfollows on a weekly basis, unfollow accounts, schedule up to ten tweets, and generate some additional analytics reports. That’s all in the free version.

The paid versions expand the functionality of the free version. The starter version works with up to 6,000 followers and expands the scheduler to 50 tweets, gives you direct message campaigns, growth analysis, influencer analysis, list analysis, and a few dozen other features you can find detailed on their plans page. It’s $5 a month. Plans scale up form there, giving you more scheduling, access to more than one account, and higher follower limits, for $20, $40, $100, and enterprise-level scaled plans.

 

To be clear, the basic mapping functionality we’re using here is available for accounts of any size for free. It’s just the detailed analytics and scheduling options – the options that turn this service into an all-in-one dashboard – that require payment. I recommend using the free version for now and going from there.

When you sign in and authorize the app, it pulls your follower list and maps them by country on an actual map. You can see what percentage of your followers are in what countries. If you want to narrow it down, you can click to sort by state/province, or even down to the city level.

There’s only one downside to this map; the free version doesn’t actually tell you who is where. It shows you the percentage of users in a given location, but it doesn’t tell you who they are when you click. To see that, you need to sign up for the $5 starter plan. Now, it’s only $5, which isn’t a bad fee, so feel free to do it. However, it’s not free, so I can see why some users would prefer not to.

Another drawback is the city-level analysis, which only works if the users in question have specified a city. My analysis at the state level shows that I have a few followers in Alaska, but at the city level, it shows nothing. As such, the state/province level is probably the most accurate and useful for most businesses.

2. Use a Map to Find New Potential Followers

The second option is another map, but rather than mapping your existing followers to a geographic location in order to see where your audience is, you’re looking at Twitter users in general and looking for chances to find new followers. Let me explain.

This method is most useful for small and mid sized businesses with local audience, who want to find people locally they can engage with. It’s called the One Million Tweet Map, and what it does is monitors the most recent million tweets on Twitter. This is an amazing volume of data, and you can watch the map just pulse with new engagement throughout the day. Heck, in the time it took me to write this paragraph, there hve been almost 5,000 new tweets.

One Million Tweet Map

The map starts all zoomed out, and shows large circles for clusters of tweets. The northeastern United States has somewhere around 155,000 tweets at the moment, but that covers everywhere from Oklahoma to Florida to New York. What you can do, though, is zoom in.

Say, for example, your small business is located in Oklahoma City. I can zoom in and see that there are about 1,000 tweets in the most recent million in the boundaries of the city. I can zoom in further and see that eight of them are out in El Reno, nine are down in Chickasha, 29 are over in Shawnee, and so forth. Each time you click a circle, you zoom in to the level of that circle and see additional subdivisions inside it. Zoom in on your location and see what’s going on around your specific area.

 

When you get down to the level where the circles are white instead of blue, you can click the circles and see the actual tweets recorded and used for the map.

From there, it’s a bit of a variable process. The idea, in general, is to look for content you can engage with as your brand. It’s not going to be content focused on your brand, most of the time. People aren’t tweeting about you constantly. You have social listening services to find that kind of content anyways. What you should be doing is looking for relatively generic content you can add something to, and get people to engage back. By becoming an engaged and interesting brand, you can gain new followers.

The caveat here is that your data isn’t always going to be 100% accurate. If you zoom all the way back out, you’ll see that there are a lot of random sub-10 tweet circles in strange places around the map. See, on Twitter, you can put whatever geographic location you want as your location. Some people think it’s amusing to claim to tweet from Antarctica. Some accounts are strange bots that no one knows what to make of.

Odd Bot Account

Still, you can get some interesting local engagement and manually pull in a few followers.

3. Identify Geographically Local Followers

The remaining three options all require a tool I’m quite fond of called Twitonomy. However, in order to get the data you want out of it, you’ll need to pay for a premium account. Premium is going to cost you $20 for a month if you buy just a single month, or cheaper if you go for a bulk plan.

Twitonomy Homepage

What you’re going to want to do once you have the paid account set up is go to your profile and let it analyze your data. Once all of the boxes have filled in – it should only take a few seconds – you should find the “followers” section on the side. Note that there isn’t really any data there on location; that’s fine. What you want to do is click the orange button that says download. When you download the data from Twitonomy, you get a lot more than just what it lists in the box. Most importantly, you’re going to have a “location” column, which you can use to filter and sort through your followers.

With this data, you can do a bunch of different sorts. I’ve listed three options you can use to improve your marketing.

The first option is to look for the followers you have that are local to your region. Do a search for your city and your state. This will show you the followers who have listed those locations as their locations. Again, you’re not going to be 100% accurate with your data because people can pick whatever location they like, spoof it with mobile app GPS simulators, and the like. Still, you’ll be able to see a good chunk of your local followers.

Why would you do this? Well, you get to see who is local to you, and can then filter that data in further ways. For example, you can find which local followers have the largest audiences. Label them local influencers and work to engage with them in a way that brings you further benefit. What exactly you do with all this data is, of course, up to you. Just try not to be too creepy; people don’t appreciate it when a brand goes overboard.

4. Identify Out of Demographic Followers

The second thing you can do with the data you pull from Twitonomy is filter it for locations that are clearly outside of your areas. For example, if your business is based in California and you can only ship locally, you can filter out those people and have a list just of the people who don’t have listed locations and people who have locations elsewhere. If you have a bunch of followers from Canada, you can question how useful those followers are going to be. Are they people who can engage with you and enhance your brand? Are they followers that just boost your follower count while doing their own thing?

I wouldn’t necessarily go and remove these followers. A brand can build a following in areas where they don’t market. Maybe you have a brand advocate locally who moved there and stayed following you. Maybe it’s an indicator of a new market you can expand and reach out into. Maybe it’s local followers listing their previous hometown. Use your discretion. However, there is one reason you might want to delete them.

5. Identify Potentially Fake Followers

When you filter out followers by location, you should keep an eye out for locations that truly can’t matter to your brand. A small local business in California is unlikely to have any real, good followers from India. Oh, sure, there could be some immigrants who have moved to your area and who use Twitter, and that’s fine. On the other hand, some of them may be spam bots, click farm workers, or fake accounts that weren’t smart enough to put locations more regional into their bots.

 

Original 5 Ways to Sort Your Twitter Followers by Country and Location

Geographic position is veritably important for a lot of small businesses. Gaining a lot of followers is each well and good, but if you ’re a small original business in California and you ’re getting substantially followers from Spain, who's going to watch? It’s always better to attract, target, and engage with original followers who are more likely to take advantage of your services, and more likely to give you preferential treatment because you ’re original to them.

For larger businesses, geographic position is important because you want to know the demographics of your druggies. You want to be suitable to see where they ’re coming from, so you know how to reach out to them. You also want to be suitable to use position as a possible sludge for fake followers. Now, position is n’t always a sure- fire index – heck, it’s not always a good index at all – but it’s still worth knowing.

What I ’ve done then's come up with five different ways you can collect position and follower data, compare it, and use it to your marketing advantage. Each fashion has pros and cons, however in far the biggest con for all of these is having to pay for utmost of it. See, Twitter does n’t have any accessible way to do any of this sorting with their erected-in analytics, so you have to turn to third party programs, and those tend to bring plutocrat. I ’ll note costs when I find them, though as with anything you read online, it’s possible they've changed since I wrote this. Feel free to let me know if that’s the case.

Hopefully one or two of these styles of sorting out followers will be helpful to you. I ’ve tried to explain how you can gain an advantage from each, however, so test them out and see if they can give your markeitng an edge

.1. Put Being Followers on a Chart

Typically, if you would want to put your followers on a chart, you would have to do some enough complicated custom rendering with a list of your followers pulled from Twitter and, presumably, a Google Charts API. I ’m going to skip all of that and just forward you to a service that does it for you. The service in question is TweepsMap.

TweepsMap Website

TweepsMap is a free service available to anyone, with only a many restrictions. They've a enough unique geographically- centered platform that starts by mapping your followers to position. From there, it allows you to run hashtag quests, set up a tweet alert, track follows and unfollows on a daily base, unfollow accounts, schedule up to ten tweets, and induce some fresh analytics reports. That’s all in the free interpretation.

The paid performances expand the functionality of the free interpretation. The starter interpretation works with over to followers and expands the scheduler to 50 tweets, gives you direct communication juggernauts, growth analysis, influencer analysis, list analysis, and a many dozen other features you can find detailed on their plans runner. It’s$ 5 a month. Plans gauge up form there, giving you further scheduling, access to further than one account, and advanced follower limits, for$ 20,$ 40,$ 100, and enterprise- position gauged plans.

To be clear, the introductory mapping functionality we ’re using then's available for accounts of any size for free. It’s just the detailed analytics and scheduling options – the options that turn this service into an each- by-one dashboard – that bear payment. I recommend using the free interpretation for now and going from there.

When you subscribe in and authorize the app, it pulls your follower list and maps them by country on an factual chart. You can see what chance of your followers are in whatcountries.However, you can click to sort in state/ fiefdom, or indeed down to the megacity position, If you want to constrict it down.

There’s only one strike to this chart; the free interpretation does n’t actually tell you who's where. It shows you the chance of druggies in a given position, but it does n’t tell you who they're when you click. To see that, you need to subscribe up for the$ 5 starter plan. Now, it’s only$ 5, which is n’t a bad figure, so feel free to do it. Still, it’s not free, so I can see why some druggies would prefer not to.

 

Another debit is the megacity- position analysis, which only works if the druggies in question have specified a megacity. My analysis at the state position shows that I've a many followers in Alaska, but at the megacity position, it shows nothing. As similar, the state/ fiefdom position is presumably the most accurate and useful for utmost businesses.

2. Use a Chart to Find New Implicit Followers

The alternate option is another chart, but rather than mapping your being followers to a geographic position in order to see where your followership is, you ’re looking at Twitter druggies in general and looking for chances to find new followers. Let me explain.

This system is most useful for small and medial sized businesses with original followership, who want to find people locally they can engage with. It’s called the One Million Tweet Map, and what it does is monitors the most recent million tweets on Twitter. This is an amazing volume of data, and you can watch the chart just palpitation with new engagement throughout the day. Heck, in the time it took me to write this paragraph, there hve been nearly new tweets.

One Million Tweet Map

The chart starts all zoomed out, and shows large circles for clusters of tweets. The northeastern United States has nearly around tweets at the moment, but that covers everyplace from Oklahoma to Florida to New York. What you can do, however, is drone heft.

Say, for illustration, your small business is located in Oklahoma City. I can zoom heft and see that there are about tweets in the most recent million in the boundaries of the megacity. I can zoom in farther and see that eight of them are out in El Reno, nine are down in Chickasha, 29 are over in Shawnee, and so forth. Each time you click a circle, you zoom in to the position of that circle and see fresh services inside it. Drone in on your position and see what’s going on around your specific area.

When you get down to the position where the circles are white rather of blue, you can click the circles and see the factual tweets recorded and used for the chart.

From there, it’s a bit of a variable process. The idea, in general, is to look for content you can engage with as your brand. It’s not going to be happy concentrated on your brand, utmost of the time. People are n’t twittering about you constantly. You have social listening services to find that kind of content anyway. What you should be doing is looking for fairly general content you can add commodity to, and get people to engage back. By getting an engaged and intriguing brand, you can gain new followers.

The caveat then's that your data is n’t always going to be 100accurate.However, you ’ll see that there are a lot of arbitrarysub-10 tweet circles in strange places around the chart, If you zoom all the way back out. See, on Twitter, you can put whatever geographic position you want as your position. Some people suppose it’s entertaining to claim to tweet from Antarctica. Some accounts are strange bots that no bone knows what to make of.

Odd Bot Account

Still, you can get some intriguing original engagement and manually pull in a many followers.

 

3. Identify Geographically Original Followers

The remaining three options all bear a tool I ’m relatively fond of called Twitonomy. Still, in order to get the data you want out of it, you ’ll need to pay for a decoration account. Premium is going to bring you$ 20 for a month if you buy just a single month, or cheaper if you go for a bulk plan.

Twitonomy Homepage

What you ’re going to want to do formerly you have the paid account set up is go to your profile and let it dissect your data. Formerly all of the boxes have filled in – it should only take a many seconds – you should find the “ followers” section on the side. Note that there is n’t really any data there on position; that’s forfeiture. What you want to do is click the orange button that says download. When you download the data from Twitonomy, you get a lot further than just what it lists in the box. Most importantly, you ’re going to have a “ position” column, which you can use to filter and sort through your followers.

With this data, you can do a bunch of different feathers. I ’ve listed three options you can use to ameliorate your marketing.

The first option is to look for the followers you have that are original to your region. Do a hunt for your megacity and your state. This will show you the followers who have listed those locales as their locales. Again, you ’re not going to be 100 accurate with your data because people can pick whatever position they like, imitate it with mobile app GPS simulators, and the suchlike. Still, you ’ll be suitable to see a good knob of your original followers.

Why would you do this? Well, you get to see who's original to you, and can also filter that data in farther ways. For illustration, you can find which original followers have the largest cult. Marker them original influencers and work to engage with them in a way that brings you farther benefit. What exactly you do with all this data is, of course, up to you. Just try not to be too creepy; people do n’t appreciate it when a brand goes overboard.

4. Identify Out of Demographic Followers

The alternate thing you can do with the data you pull from Twitonomy is sludge it for locales that are easily outside of your areas. For illustration, if your business is grounded in California and you can only transport locally, you can filter out those people and have a list just of the people who do n’t have listed locales and people who have localeselsewhere.However, you can question how useful those followers are going to be, If you have a bunch of followers from Canada. Are they people who can engage with you and enhance your brand? Are they followers that just boost your follower count while doing their own thing?

I would n’t inescapably go and remove these followers. A brand can make a following in areas where they do n’t request. Perhaps you have a brand advocate locally who moved there and stayed following you. Perhaps it’s an index of a new request you can expand and reach out into. Perhaps it’s original followers listing their former birthplace. Use your discretion. Still, there's one reason you might want to cancel them.

5. Identify Potentially Fake Followers

When you filter out followers by position, you should keep an eye out for locales that truly ca n’t count to your brand. A small original business in California is doubtful to have any real, good followers from India. Oh, sure, there could be some emigrants who have moved to your area and who use Twitter, and that’s forfeiture. On the other hand, some of them may be spam bots, click ranch workers, or fake accounts that were n’t smart enough to put locales more indigenous into their bots.