Is There a Social Quant Alternative that Twitter Won’t Shut Down?

Social Quant is Dead!

If you don’t believe me, go to their homepage. You’ll probably see what we did when we went there.

The platform many of us have used for years to help grow our Twitter following is another victim of Twitter’s focus on enforcing their rules.

With Social Quant, you connected your Twitter account to their site, picked keywords (which were likely hashtags) tweeted by people you wanted to follow, and you were done. The tool would start following those lucky people.

The hope was that those that you followed would follow you back– a technique that has been proven to work over and over.

I had my personal Twitter account @scottayres connected to their site for over a year, and more than doubled my following due to their work.

Everything was going great for Social Quant and its users until …

Social Quant Gets Squashed by Twitter

On April 3, 2018, Twitter sent this email was sent to any user they believed had used Social Quant and a few of the other apps that found themselves in their crosshairs.

Then a week or so later Twitter shut down Social Quant’s Twitter account, along with the accounts of several employees (including the founder of the company).

This caused tons of users to immediately disconnect from Social Quant due to fear of being punished themselves.

On Monday May 7, I hopped over to their site to check my account (I was still connected) and got the “winding down operations” screenshot I shared at the beginning of this post.

I reached out to their team and got this reply:

Hi Scott,

Pursuant to Social Quant’s Terms of Service, we may at any time ‘modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Company Services (or any part thereof) with or without notice.’ Accordingly, Social Quant has decided to discontinue our services permanently. We apologize for any inconvenience.

We have stopped service and billing for everyone.

Like you, I’m now looking for alternatives to do the heavy lifting, just like Social Quant did.

Social Quant Alternatives

Let’s take a look at how you can use a few other apps to do the work Social Quant did.

1. ManageFlitter

ManageFlitter has been in business since 2010 and complies with all of Twitter’s rules.

They also come highly recommended by Twitter power user Madalyn Sklar — if she trusts it, I know I can!

Here are some of the features that the tool offers.

Account management

This tab shows me how many people don’t follow me back and gives me the option to then unfollow each of them (one-by-one) if I so choose.

Filtering options on the left navigation bar allow you to search by these categories:

No Profile Image.
Non-English.
Inactive (haven’t tweeted in the last 30 days).
Fake (shows you what accounts you follow that they have deemed fake, not sure on what criteria).
Following Ratio (lets you see who has a high/low following ratio. High is bad.)
Talkative/Quiet (shows who tweets more than 5 times per day, or less than 1 time per day).
Influence (self-explanatory).
Never Unfollow/Follow (allows you to whitelist or blacklist users. Only for their Pro plan).
Manage Muted Users.
Everyone You Follow.

With the free account, you are limited to just 20 follows/unfollows per day, although they present you with few options to increase that limit.

Analytics

The “Analytics” section is only available for paid plans. I don’t have a paid plan so can’t see the analytics, but did find this screenshot from ManageFlitter’s blog:

Engagement

To my surprise, there is a scheduling option inside ManageFlitter called “Powerpost” that picks an “ideal” time to post.

Pricing

ManageFlitter has plans as low as $12 per month if the free plan doesn’t suit your needs. It can get quite pricey if you manage multiple Twitter accounts.

2. Agorapulse

At first glance, Agorapulse might not seem like an alternative to Social Quant, especially when it comes to following and unfollowing automatically.

But the Agorapulse’s “Listening” feature can easily find people tweeting about relevant subjects or mentioning you.

Just choose the social profile you want to build a following for and click “Listening.”

Then click the “Create a new search button”, which shows you the next option.

Here you can see any searches you already created. You can edit them or create new searches.

Click “Create a new search.”

As you can see, you can enter a hashtag to search for and give that search a title. You can also add multiple words, phrases, or Twitter handles to your search. Click “Next” when done.

You can “heart” each tweet, reply to it and open it in Twitter if you’d like. Since in this search it’s from a word or phrase, I can’t choose to follow that person inside our app due to Twitter restrictions. I’d have to open that tweet in Twitter to do so.

But if it was a search that mentioned my username I can follow the account, as in the example below (notice the Follow button on the right):

You could set up multiple searches for different phrases and usernames, and follow anyone not following you.

Granted there isn’t a way to then unfollow anyone that doesn’t follow you back, but it’s a great way to start growing targeted followers based on your searches.

Plus you are in complete control, and can reply to Tweets as well. Those replies and/or retweets are valuable and will get people to notice you.

(And shall I mention that you’d be using a tool that abides by Twitter’s rules?)

You could also add tags (like the “ambassador” tag on the image above) to each person so you could organize who the users are.

Unlike ManageFlitter, Agorapulse works with many other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Pricing starts at $49 and offers three social profiles in its intro plan. (Manage Flitter’s starter “Pro” plan only gives you one profile.) All Agorapulse’s plans give you access to all of its publishing and reporting features — whereas you’d have to upgrade to the Manage Flitter “Business” plan to get everything.

To manage 10 Twitter profiles on Agorapulse will run you $99/mo. On Manage Flitter, it’s $199/mo.

3. Other Social Quant Alternatives

I’ve had a hard time finding other Social Quant alternatives that I trusted enough to test. That said, I’ve compiled a list of a few you might consider.

Some require you to download their software, which will keep you from running into issues that Social Quant users had with multiple IP addresses logging into your Twitter account.

But there is no way to know what sort of information that software is taking from you, or what it’s adding to your system.

So use wisely.

CrowdFire (works in a similar way to ManageFlitter)
FollowLiker
TweetAttacksPro
Audiense
Tweepi

Whether you use a tool to grow your followers for you or do it manually on your own, the key is to follow the right people who will in turn engage with you.

Otherwise, you’re basically getting fake and useless followers — which used to fool the boss in say, 2010. Now, a large following of unresponsive followers serves no use whatsoever.

What Social Quant alternative are you considering? Let us know in the comments!

The post Is There a Social Quant Alternative that Twitter Won’t Shut Down? appeared first on Agorapulse.