Completely Automate Twitter and Build an Audience Fast

In this article I'll show you how to completely automate your Twitter profile so that you can quickly build an online audience. We won't be discussing the pros and cons of this approach - and you should be clear that there are many cons - it purely focuses on the 'how to'.

So, now that you're aware that the whole thing is a bit 'spammy', if you still want to know how, read on. Oh, and I should be absolutely clear, I do NOT use this technique on here! OK, without further ado...

1. Create a Twitter Account

A little bit obvious perhaps, but best to start at the beginning. It's good if you can include some keywords in your Twitter username, display name and bio. This makes it easy for people to find you when searching for particular topics.

Don't forget to put a link to your website on your profile. When you start following people, they'll more than likely take a look at who you are and then click through to your site.

A nice relevant profile picture and colour scheme to match your website finishes off the professional look.

2. Set up a Yahoo Pipe

Set up a what? Read more about Yahoo Pipes here - but for our purposes the pipe simply allows you to take feeds from various sources and combine them into one single feed.

You might now very well be asking - but why? The answer is simple - you want to post interesting articles about your 'topic' on your Twitter profile, but you don't want to have to write them or constantly look for new ones to tweet. Soooo, we do the hard work upfront - and by hard work, I mean about 30 mins of effort (for a lifetime of automation!).

It goes something like this... using Google find sites that discuss your topic and also have an RSS feed*. Next plug the feed into your Yahoo Pipe - you can apply a keyword filter if need be (useful when the feed also discusses other topics). Now use Google to find another similar site/feed and repeat the process until exhausted.

When you're done, save and run your pipe. You'll get the option to have the pipe as an RSS feed - take a copy of the pipe feed URL (you'll need this later).

Here's a nice little tutorial for creating your first Yahoo Pipe.

*IMPORTANT: check the Terms of Use for each site - many forbid activities like this.

3. Configure TwitterFeed

TwitterFeed is a great service which monitors an RSS feed and every time there is a new article, it will post an update on your Twitter profile.

So, what TwitterFeed is going to do for us is monitor the Yahoo Pipe RSS feed (which remember is being fed from lots of other great RSS feeds you found earlier), and then post these useful articles on your Twitter account. All articles will link back to the original source, so no-one will think you're passing these off as your own. You're just being really helpful by tweeting links to stories that are interesting to your followers. All this without doing any work (after the initial set up).

4. Set up a Twollo Account

Twollo allows you to automatically follow people who tweet keywords that you specify. So you're going to want to follow people who mention keywords related to your topic - because they might be interested in the (automatic) tweets you're going to be publishing.

Why are we doing this? Well, normally when you follow someone, they'll at least check out your Twitter profile. And, if they find you interesting, they'll probably follow you back. This is how you're going to build your audience.

Exercise caution when setting this up - it's easy to follow too many people for too many things and your ratio of Followers to Following becomes horribly unbalanced (and you don't want that).

Note that Twollow (with a 'w' at the end) offers a similar auto-follow service.

5. Optionally use TweetLater

TweetLater lets you do a number of things (including schedule tweets - though I prefer Twuffer for this). The two things we're interested in are automatic Direct Messages and also automatic Un-Follow.

When someone follows you, TweetLater will allow you to send them a direct message. You might want to use this to thank them for following you and then provide a link to your website or possible a voucher code. This is where is can get really spammy and you should be aware... the overwhelming majority of Twitter users hate spammy auto-DMs! You have been warned.

The other useful feature we mentioned with TweetLater was the auto Un-Follow. So if someone follows you and later stops, it will automatically unfollow them. This is good for keeping your Follower/Following ratio balanced. Occasionally you may need to perform a manual pruning.

6. Sit Back and Relax

That's it, you're done. Your Twitter account will now frequently be updated with interesting and relevant tweets (if you did a good job with your Yahoo Pipe). And you'll have an ever-growing 'qualified' audience by auto-following people who will follow you back (thanks to Twollo).

Actually, that's not quite it... I highly recommend monitoring your Twitter account for the first few hours and then again each day for the first week just to make sure everything is working OK. Things to look out for include:

1. Posting irrelevant tweets (modify your Yahoo Pipe)
   
2. Posting too regularly (tweak TwitterFeed)
3. Following the wrong people or too many people (reconfigure Twollo)

Good luck with this if you do decide to use it, and be sure to let me (and everyone else) know how you get on.