In part 1 of “Automated Twitter” we talked about the proper way and the wrong way of automating followers and dealt with a little Direct Message etiquette. Here we will finish up follower maintenance and automating tweets for a well rounded automated Twitter account.
You can perform Twitter searches and follow folks over and over (1,000 everyday max, 200 – 400 each day recommended) but at some point you will hit Twitters 2,000 follower limit. At the 2,000 mark, they have some sort of secret algorithm that requires you have about a 200 person difference between followers and the ones you follow. Or 10% or something like that depending on your tweet record – it’s a secret. So sooner than you think you will have to tweak your list.
One very well known tool is Twitter Karma. You’ll be able to list people that are not following back. It’ll display those who have not tweeted in 2 or 3 weeks or many months. Un-follow them. It will also show who is still an active twitter-er but for whatever reason chose to not follow you back. They can go unless it is someone you want to track. So from that 2,000 level forward you are going to have to keep an eye on it.
Another site I like even better is Manageflitter. It will let you sort the non followers, the lively followers, the non-active, the silent and the active. Even lets you sort the people which are too lazy to add a photo.
Now then, unless you intend to spend half your waking hours tweeting you life away, you’re going to need a little help. There are many services online that you are able to schedule tweets with but definitely the most effective I’ve found is Twaiter. It’s the first and only website that I’ve found which will still let you place reoccurring tweets for free.
There are numerous desktop programs that you can fill up with scheduled twitter updates with so being able to schedule tweets is no hassle. I already have a free tool that you could import hundreds of one liners (tweets) and at random have them post at random time intervals. The challenge becomes doing it in a way that will not cause you to seem like a bot. Keeping that in mind, you don’t want to use Twaiter to post the same thing at noon every day. A far better option would be to come up with seven different variants of the same ad and schedule each once a week.
Important thing is this:
There are hundreds of websites and applications to help you with an automated Twitter account, maybe a dozen really worth a hoot. Not one of these tools can help if you do not take an active role in group contribution. A rough guesstimate is that automation should not account for more than 50% – 75%. You must respond to legitimate direct messages, you must re-tweet, you must interject hash tags, you must see who’s talking about you and become part of the group. If you don’t change up your tweets and have interaction, at some point you turn into a spammer and no one likes spammers. Twitter will close you down.
( In case you missed part 1 of this report, It can be found HERE.. )
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