It’s a brand new year so that means time to tidy up our social media. However, that would be boring so let’s make it into a game.

Note: While this is about Twitter, you should be able to apply the same ideas to other social media things.

Twitter clean up: The game

The setup

Step one: Open up your Twitter following list and scroll as far down as you can be bothered to go. Holding PgDN (page down) for a bit should have you shooting down that list in no time.

Step two: Now you are way down in the weeds of people you followed a long time ago, it is time to open lots of tabs. Right-click and open in a new tab a bunch of people you follow – aim for mostly people who do not follow you back. (middle click should also have the same effect). 10 is a decent number for a single day’s gameplay.

The game

Now it is time to make a prediction – how many of those accounts will survive the next stage. Lock in your prediction by writing your guess down.

Elimination time

Take some time to look at each profile in turn. Then apply two tests to them (one at a time).

Test one: If the profile has not been active in the last few years, it is probably abandoned. Unfollow and close the tab.

Test two: Take a look at some recent tweets and see if you can find something you can happily retweet then do so) or comment on (do that now too). By comment, I don’t mean junk – I mean a useful contribution to a conversation. If you can do that, the profile survives. If not, there is no real reason to follow them. Unfollow and close the tab.

How did you do?

How many tabs are still open? That’s the final score. Did it match your guess (if so, you are a good guesser).

Why this matters

Cleaning out people you follow but have no reason to interact with and accounts you cannot interact with through disuse, are both clogging up your follow list with accounts that you are not interested in or are zombies.

However, the accounts you could interact with are people that you followed but never took the time to build a relationship with. Your comments and/or retweets have a good chance of kicking off the social party of social media.

Do this every day for a week and you will have ensured that 70 accounts you follow are cleaned out or interacted with. That’s 70 accounts that were just dead weight on your following list that are gone or brought to life.

After all, your author platform is not you follow numbers but the people who you interact with and would be pleased to hear about your book launch. This week, your Twitter account got that bit closer to being a part of your alive platform.