Free Twitter Automation
Power Guide to Twitter Automation: Tools, Strategies, Ethics
Any kind of automation in online marketing has always been a subject of a great controversy. And Twitter is no exception.
Where? s that line between being authentic and being spammy? What? s the moment your white hat starts turning grey?
All this matters for many… but not to me.
In this 4800-words-long guide to? Twitter Automation? I’m going to ignore all the ethics and focus solely on the efficiency of existing automation tactics.
If it works – I’ll take it!
I did a thorough research and tested a few of my own ideas, so I can proudly say that what you see below is The Most Comprehensive Twitter Automation Guide to this date.
Things You Can Automate on Twitter
I know many of you are here for the shortcuts. You need a tool or two that will do the job while you sleep.
[fancy_box id=5]BONUS: [content_upgrade id=5356]click here[/content_upgrade] to get a list of my recommended Twitter Marketing tools that will save your time and sanity[/fancy_box]
Well, I do have some tools for you. But first, let? s focus on the sorts of things you can automate on Twitter and if it’s worth the effort.
1. Automate Following People
I? m sorry, but you’re a little late. Last year Twitter officially killed? auto follow?.
And here? s what their guidelines say about it:? You may not use or develop any service that allows for the following or unfollowing of user accounts in a bulk or automated manner. Accounts and applications that engage in this practice will be suspended.?
Those of you, who are new to Social Media Marketing might wonder: “Why the hell would I want to follow people in bulk? Where’s the catch? ”
Well, you see, human beings generally tend to return favours (this is called “the principle of reciprocity”, from a book by Robert Cialdini? Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion? ), so some of the people you have followed will follow you back in return.
This is really the easiest way to get tens of thousands of followers.
But will those followers care about what you tweet?
Hell NO! (you should really click the link and read the article)
Twitter says I? m following 500 other people. Do you think I read tweets from all of them? Of course not, that’s just impossible.
Ever heard of the? Dunbar? s number?? It suggests that a person can maintain stable social relationships with no more than 150 other people.
every person in my Twitter lists is a very well thought decision
I’ve put 25 people I really care about onto three different Twitter lists and I don’t read tweets from any other people, even though it looks like I follow them.
Now do you really think someone can become the 26th person I care about just by following me on Twitter? Not a chance!
That is why? mass following? is simply a waste of your precious time.
You can grow your Twitter account to a few thousand followers this way, but you won’t get any traffic from them.
A huge number of followers can also work as a social proof (people with large Twitter following are perceived as authorities), but if you prefer to scam your audience like that, why don’t you save yourself some time and just buy Twitter followers on Fiverr?
If you ask me, I hate when bloggers do such things.
2. Automate Posting Tweets
The vast majority of your followers don’t pay attention to what you tweet.
You can easily verify my claim by sending a? [tweet_dis]Please reply me if you see this message[/tweet_dis]? tweet. I bet you? ll get no more than 10 replies for every 1000 followers that you have. (really, try it)
Why am I so sure?
Three years ago Rand Fishkin was getting about 150-250 clicks on the links he tweeted while having about 20k followers on Twitter.
Solid number of followers doesn’t always result in a solid number of clicks
That’s only 1% of his followers. And that guy is a very famous and respected person in the SEO community.
No offence, but I believe you (my reader) are not Rand Fishkin.
So I guess the engagement levels of your Twitter followers are much much lower.
Where am I going with this?
I’m trying to say, that you shouldn’t really bother about what you tweet to your own followers. You should bother about what you tweet to influencers like Rand Fishkin!
Why?
I hope you had the chance to read my Twitter Marketing For Dummies guide. It says that the best way to get solid traffic from Twitter is to make influencers tweet your stuff.
[tweet_box]The best way to get solid traffic from Twitter is to make influencers tweet your stuff[/tweet_box]
But first, you should at least appear on their radar. And that is not a simple task.
What if you tweet every single article they publish on their blog? Will they notice you? Might be. Especially if you mention them by adding an “article by @author” suffix to each tweet.
Luckily, this is something you can easily automate. And I see nothing spammy about it.
If someone would automatically tweet every new article published here at BloggerJet I would feel nothing but gratitude to that person (hint-hint).
The only downside of such automation is that you can’t add a personal note to the tweet. But hey, you can always tweet the same article again with your comment after you’ve read it.
[tweet_box]You can’t make a person upset by tweeting his article twice[/tweet_box]
Your personal notes in tweets are very important for they make your message stand out from hundreds of other tweets and help you create that bond with the author of the article.
a few kind words in a tweet will never hurt… especially when they’re sincere
I suggest you make it a habit to tweet every article you read online, mentioning its author and adding a brief comment to the tweet.
You never know when such tweet will turn into a life-long relationship.
PS: If you insist on the importance of tweeting your articles to your own Twitter followers, here’s what you can do:
Auto tweet every article you publish on your own blog (saves you a few minutes of time);
Auto tweet older articles from your blog (a lot of followers missed them before, so they will see them now).
And yes, I have the tool for you down below. Keep reading.
3. Get More Tweets From Your Readers
There was one more cool idea in my? Twitter Marketing for Dummies? guide:
[tweet_box]Tweets from your readers bring more traffic than you get from your own followers[/tweet_box]
So you have 2000 Twitter followers. This is how many people you reach, by tweeting your newly published article. (…and only 1% of them will engage with that tweet, remember? )
But the article has its own reach!
Whenever someone tweets your article to his followers – that adds to the reach of your article. If 10 people with 500 followers each will tweet your article after reading it – it reached 10*500 = 5000 people! That is already more than your own reach!
So instead of focusing on growing your own Twitter following I suggest you to focus on making your readers tweet your article to their followers.
I don’t think the word “automation” applies to the tips below, but at least you can call them “set & forget” strategies:
First and foremost your content should be absolutely amazing for people love to tweet stuff that makes them look good (no one wants to get accused of reading junk);
Your headline should be enticing, so that people who don? t have time to read the post will still tweet it (and tweets with great headlines have a higher CTR on Twitter);
Tweeting your article should be effortless, so make sure your tweet button is easy to locate (you have lots of cool social plugins at your disposal);
Fill your article with short tweetable statements to provide your readers with some solid copy to pull into their Twitter updates other than just your headline.
And what if you settle an agreement with a few other bloggers to automatically tweet every new article published on your blogs?
Sounds awesome? Read along, I have a great tool for you down there…
4. Automate @Replies / DMs / RTs
I’m afraid everything that falls into this category is not endorsed by Twitter themselves:
The @reply and Mention functions are intended to make communication between users easier, and automating these processes in order to reach many users is considered an abuse of the feature.
We discourage the automatic retweeting of other users based on a particular keyword and may suspend accounts that engage in this behavior.
Including an automated? thanks for following? message to your new followers might be annoying to some users. We do not recommend this behavior.
But hey, I told you this guide is about efficiency and not ethics.
a) Automating @Replies
Just recently I tweeted a cool article from TechCrunch and within a few minutes got a very nice reply from it? s author:
He was inviting me to his email list via a Twitter card. What an awesome tactic!
But this wasn’t an automated tweet and unfortunately my search for the kind of tool that can do it on auto pilot ended up with nothing.
Yet I’m convinced this great tactic is well worth some manual work! Just copy/paste the same text to everyone who? s tweeting your articles once you notice that. Why not?
Nir offered me to subscribe via a Twitter Card, but I can already see a few other ways to leverage these replies:
Ask to share the article via other social networks:? Hey @username Thanks a lot for the tweet! I would really appreciate if you could give the post a G+ and? like? as well:)? ;
Offer more content:? Thanks for the tweet! Did you also see this article of mine about the same topic? link_to_article? ;
Offer a product:? Thanks for the tweet! Maybe you? d be interested in taking my free email course at link_to_course??.
If you try replying everyone who tweets your articles you’ll see how effective this is.
This tactic is based on the principle of Commitment (or Consistency) offered by Robert Cialdini in his book. It suggests that we have a deep desire to be consistent and once we’ve committed to something, we’re then more inclined to go through with it.
So when someone is tweeting out your article, he’s kind of admitting that it’s great. And once you ask him for some favour related to this article, his inner forces make it really hard to refuse.
You can even go further with this strategy – monitor as people tweet a specific keyword or a hashtag and try to engage with them exactly the same way. This will be a little less effective as the principle of commitment is absent in this case, but it’s still worth a try!
And don? t you tell me it? s spammy or irritating. You? re actually doing a disservice to people, by not offering them your great content when they need it (in case your content is truly great of course).
But most importantly? This tactic really works.
b) Automating Direct Messages
The above tricks apply to direct messages as well. But this time you’ll be reaching out to people who have just followed you or who are following you already.
Some bloggers are convinced that everyone hates automated Direct Messages. But as bloggers/marketers we? re biased. We know most of the tactics and we can easily spot them. What about the people with less experience in online marketing or those with no experience at all?
I believe many of them would be happy to get some extra content from you via a direct message and not consider it sleazy. So why don’t you just try it?
Sending an automated direct message to every new follower is something you can still automate with certain tools as Twitter does not directly prohibit this practice (they just don’t endorse it).
One other thing you can automate is sending a mass direct message to all your followers.
I think this makes a lot of sense when you launch something important and you want your followers to know about that.
And it makes no sense at all if you decide to direct message them every new article you publish – you have regular tweets for that.
Something to consider: only people that you follow can send direct messages to you. This way a follower of yours won’t be able to reply to your direct message if you’re not following him back. Now this can be really irritating and piss some people off.
c) Automating ReTweets
Some tools give you an opportunity to retweet pre-selected users in case they tweet pre-selected keywords.
But what’s the point? If you start auto-retweeting influencers I don’t think this will help you a lot to appear on their radar.
So I’m afraid I can’t really see the benefits of automating retweets. If you think otherwise – please share your ideas in the comments.
5. Automate Researching New Connections
Before you start doing those things to appear on someones radar you have to decide who’s that guy you want to connect with, right?
But why the “research” when you already know all the influential guys in your niche? Why search for others?
Well, probably because your chances of connecting with the top guys are miserable at best. These people get so many emails and Twitter mentions per day that it? s just impossible for them to? connect? with everyone.
That is why you should reach out to the guys who are currently at the same level you are (or maybe just a little bit higher).
Let me suggest you a nice tactic:
Once you publish your next solid article, go find 100 people on Twitter who have some influence in that topic and reach out to them.
This way, after publishing 10 articles you? re going to reach out to 1000 people in total. And I bet at least 100 of them will react in some way. You can put them on a separate Twitter list and continue your communication from there.
[tweet_box]Smart Content Marketing is when 20% of time is spent on writing content and 80% on promoting it[/tweet_box]
With this tactic you’re doing two meaningful things:
Getting your work in front of the eyes of people that have the power to spread it further;
Initiating connections with fellow bloggers that may later develop into partnership or friendship.
But don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying you should spam hundreds of people every time you publish a new 300-word article. This strategy works only if you’re promoting your best content (and I’m absolutely going to reach out with this guide to a few hundreds of people, as I’ve spent well over a month working on it).
So how do you find the right people quickly and easily? I have some cool tools below that will help you.
6. Automate Your Monitoring / Filtering
I know that the headline of this guide kind of suggests you an “auto pilot” solution. But as you already know, Twitter has killed most of the automation options, forcing everyone to use it in a more authentic way.
And even these small things that you can still automate will inevitably turn into natural conversations. And you have to make sure you won? t miss any of them.
That? s why you have to setup a convenient system of filtering and monitoring your social activity, so that you could spend no more than 30 minutes daily on your Twitter Marketing.
And in the next section I? m going to share some tools and give some tips on setting the whole “semi-automatic system” up.
Tools You Can Use To Automate Twitter
I wanted to divide these tools in groups based on what they do, but since many of them do a variety of things, I will just order them in a way that reflects how often I use them myself.
1. BufferApp (Free + Premium)
I sincerely believe that we should tweet every article we read online. That’s the least we can do to return the favour to the author of the article, who shared some valuable information with us (did you already tweet this article by the way? ).
everyone is using BufferApp to schedule their tweets… are you?
Like I suggested above, you should even go a step further and mention the author of the article in your tweet along with a quick comment about the article, as this helps to build relationships.
I use BufferApp to schedule my tweets for three reasons:
It will release the tweets I queued with certain delays instead of tweeting them all at once;
It will analyse times when my followers are most active and schedule most tweets exactly at these times;
I can then login to my dashboard and see statistics of every tweet that was sent by BufferApp: clicks, replies, retweets, etc.
This means I don’t have to worry about tweeting too many articles in a short period of time. I just stack them to BufferApp along with my comments and author mentions and then it will release them for me with perfect timing.
2. TweetDis (Premium) / ClickToTweet (Free)
Not sure if you? ve noticed the trend, but lots of bloggers today are planting short tweetable messages into their articles to motivate people to tweet more frequently. And it actually works!
This plugin will let you create “tweetable quotes” that readers just can’t resist…
Having a “Tweet” button floating next to your article is not enough to motivate your readers to share it on Twitter. You have to be just a little bit smarter about this.
Plant a few quotes or catchy phrases within the content of your article and put a “click to tweet this” call-to-action right next to them.
This way you’re giving your lazy readers some awesome copy to pull into their Twitter updates other than just tweeting the headline of the article.
Derek Halpern (an expert in social psychology) was using this trick long before everyone else did…
Lots of famous blogs are already leveraging this simple trick:
Hubspot Blog;
BufferApp Blog;
QuickSprout Blog;
Social Triggers;
BlogTyrant;
EmpireFlippers;
…& many others
And you can do it too, using either the free ClickToTweet online service or a WordPress plugin called TweetDis.
With ClickToTweet you can only create text links and you have to visit their website every time you need to create a new tweet.
With TweetDis you can setup two kinds of pre-populated tweets right within your post editor:
If the phrase that you want people to tweet deserves a paragraph of its own, you can put it into a neat box, which makes it super prominent in your article and motivates people to click and tweet it.
If the phrase is a part of the paragraph and you don? t want to take it out, you can style it differently and display a hint above it, once people hover their mouse over it.
this is what TweetDis plugin will do for you
I think you? ve noticed how I? ve used TweetDis to plant several tweetable quotes throughout this article. And I’m sure some of you actually tweeted these quotes.
If you’re interested to learn more about TweetDis, check the plugin homepage at 3. HootSuite (Free + Premium)
This tool should be your social media dashboard. This is where you monitor your brand and your niche. This is where you communicate with your followers and reach out to influencers.
HootSuite lets you create multiple? streams? that you should regularly check and jump into the conversation where necessary.
It’s super convenient to check Twitter through HootSuit
Here are the streams I have in my own HootSuite account:
A separate stream for each Twitter list I have;
A few streams with Twitter searches for keywords like? twitter marketing? or? blog promotion? ;
A stream with mentions of my twitter username – “@timsoulo”;
A stream with mentions of my brand – “BloggerJet”.
Keeping up with all these streams takes me no more than 30 minutes a day. I check what others tweet and jump into the conversation where I can.
I can’t even imagine how I would track all these things without HootSuite. Highly recommended!
(Oh… and here’s the Begginers Guide To Hootsuite in case you need it)
4. Triberr (Free + Premium)
When it comes to Twitter Marketing I’m a huge advocate of the following strategy:
Find influencers in your niche;
Connect with them;
Make them tweet your content regularly.
Well, believe it or not, but with Triberr you can skip the first two steps.
I guarantee that with this tool you’ll easily get more tweets on your articles
Triberr is a community of like-minded bloggers that form groups (tribes) and automatically tweet every new article that? s published by a member of the group.
All you need to do is sign up at Triberr, find relevant tribes and join them. Once you do that, the average number of tweets per post will noticeably increase (as well as the traffic to your blog).
This service really helped me out in the early days of BloggerJet and it still accounts for 30-50 tweets on each article I publish.
I advice you to thoroughly pick the tribes you want to join as many of them are full of low quality blogs.
tons of tribers are on Triberr already, but there’s always room for a new one
But the best way to use Triberr is of course to create a tribe of your own. I mean don’t skip those two steps I’ve mentioned above, connect with a few awesome bloggers in your niche (no more than 5) and invite them to your tribe. This way you’ll make a very powerful tribe of your own.
You may also consider Flauntt, which is a somewhat similar service.
At Flauntt you don? t need to get into existing tribes or create any. There’s a feed of articles that other bloggers have submitted and you should tweet them to get some points.
Then you can spend these points to have other people tweet your stuff.
Yet this service is very new so I’d suggest you start with Triberr.
5. FollowerWonk (Free + Premium)
This is how you find people with some influence on Twitter.
There are thousands of bloggers in your niche who would happily connect with you and share your awesome stuff with their following. And the easiest way to find them is to do a search for specific keywords in their Twitter bios.
That? s what FollowerWonk does.
you can easily find influential people on Twitter with this neat tool
But there? s more! You can then compare different users side by side and analyze their following. This will help you understand if the guy has the kind of audience you? d like to tap into.
Remember my advice to reach out to a 100 new bloggers on Twitter every time you publish a solid post? Well, with FollowerWonk you won? t ever experience a shortage of new people to reach out to.
Some may call it spamming but for me it? s more of a cold calling, which is a commonly used practice.
There are tons of alternatives to FollowerWonk that help you find influential people on Twitter. The best known are ManageFlitter & WeFollow.
6. TwitterFeed (Free)
With this simple tool you can attach an RSS feed of any blog to your Twitter account. Once a new post is published on that blog it will be automatically tweeted.
You can also attach unique suffixes to tweets from specific blogs, like this one – “article by @author”.
Remember I told you this is a nice way to have some blogger notice you?
Twitter is not the only social network that TwitterFeed currently supports
But of course you should not rely solely on this automation. If you really want to connect with someone make sure you regularly leave valuable comments on his blog and reply whenever he’s asking something on Twitter.
The automation alone is not too effective in building relationships on Twitter.
7. TweetOldPost (Free)
If you were thinking to add the RSS feed of your own blog to TwitterFeed and tweet your own articles automatically – don’t bother, there’s a much more convenient way to do this.
Meet TweetOldPost – a free plugin for Wordprees (though a plugin like this shouldn’t be free).
amazing plugin for WordPress that shouldn’t be free
It will automatically tweet every new article published on your blog and you can also configure it to tweet your older articles from time to time.
I like how Danny Iny does it. Every old article is marked as? Old favorite? at the beginning of the tweet. This way his followers can differentiate fresh content from older one.
I know this tactic works because I quite often click on those “old favourite” articles that Danny tweets.
When I reached out to Danny I found out that he’s using Tweetily, which seems like a nice alternative to TweetOldPost.
I strongly recommend you to check this great article by Kristi Hines where she gives some awesome tips on how you can use TweetOldPost plugin and not irritate your following (she also shares some nice tips on using TwitterFeed and Hootsuite).
8. TweetAdder (Premium)
Behold the king of Twitter automation! Well, at least it was one a few releases back.
With all those Twitter automation restrictions the guys at TweetAdder had to cut like half of their functionality.
tons of settings in this little tool
So what can TweetAdder be used for now?
You can search Twitter profiles and manually follow people you find (much like FollowerWonk);
You can send automated tweets and import RSS feeds of blogs (much like TwitterFeed + TweetOldPosts combo);
You can send automated Direct Messages to your new followers as well as mass Direct Messages to your existing followers (now that? s something unique).
There are a lot more features but somehow I can? t see the way to get any meaningful results with them.
If you think otherwise – please let me know in comments.
Bonus Tools
There some tools that I didn’t personally try, but I think they totally deserve to be in this guide.
And because I didn’t try them personally, my feedback is quite brief.
9. Sendible.
One of the unique features of this tool is that it can monitor specific keywords on Twitter and send automated replies to people who tweet them.
looks like a super sleek tool
How do I know it can automate replies while I didn’t even try it? I checked the user manual.
All in all this looks like a super advanced tool with tons of features. But looking at my list of “Things You Can Automate on Twitter” I just can’t see why would I need a tool like that.
10. Socialoomph.
Actually I used this one like 5 years ago, but after logging in with my old account I’ve discovered that now it’s a totally different tool.
one of the first known automation tools
Socialoomph can do almost anything, from scheduling tweets and tracking keywords to managing several accounts at once.
11. TweetDrip
Earlier in this article we were discussing ways to send Direct Messages to your followers.
drip your direct messages over time with TweetDrip
Well, I guess a mass direct message can easily be noticed by Twitter and get you in trouble.
This is why you should try using TweetDrip. It can drip your direct messages over a certain periods of time, which will not look suspicious to Twitter.
12. SocialBro
This looks like a very powerful tool. From what I can tell, it can do almost all the things the above tools and services do.
all-in-one Twitter Marketing tool
It can even automate replies when someone favourites your tweet, follows you or adds you to a twitter list. No other tool can do that.
But paying $14 to $150 monthly? (depending on your package)
I’d recommend you to try all the aforementioned strategies manually, see if they work for you and what benefits they bring… and only then decide if you’re willing to pay this money to save yourself some time doing these little tasks.
13.?
This tool seems to be extremely valuable in case you have lots of followers.
get closer to your followers with this tool
From what I can tell, this tool can identify your most influential followers and help you connect with them.
Other than that it has many cool features that let you automatically interact with your followers.
I actually discovered this tool, because someone mentioned me in a tweet:
Seems like another fun tool to try as part of your Twitter Automation strategy.
14. RoundTeam
I’ve found this tool just recently and even though I didn’t use it myself much, I believe it’s totally worth mentioning here.
With this handy tool you can configure a number of scenarios as to posting automated tweets.
You can automatically retweet messages with certain keywords or hashtags in them or retweet specific people.
This tool is very useful if you have a large number of contributors writing tweets for your company Twitter account.
What Are You Going To Automate Now?
So that was my? [tweet_dis]Ultimate Guide To Twitter Automation[/tweet_dis]?. What do you think about it?
Did you grab some fresh ideas of how to reformat your Twitter Marketing strategy and have the best possible results with the least effort and time invested?
Which tactic did you enjoy the best?
I really hope you’ve learned a ton from this guide and so I’m asking you for a small favour in return:
Please tweet this guide!
Thanks;)
Free Twitter Post Scheduling Tools – Content Career
It’s important to your social media growth and engagement that you post consistently. But if you are busy creating content, it’s not always possible to be constantly tweeting and commenting. Which is where Twitter post scheduling tools comes in.
Post scheduling tools make it easier to ensure you are active online, even when you are busy.
If you have done your research, you know what the best time of day is to post to Twitter. You will already understand what time your audience engages with your posts. You may even know when you get the most engagement. But what if you are busy at that time?
That’s where Twitter post scheduling tools come into play.
But Isn’t Automation Is Bad?
You may have read that social media automation tools are
bad. That they can result in lower engagement, and some can even get you
banned.
And it’s true that some automated social media tools are
considered spammy. Some automation tools break Twitter and other social platforms’
guidelines. For example, you could find yourself in hot water if you automate
your comments, follows, or post likes.
But for the most part, automating the posting of Tweets is fine. In fact, Twitter offers its own scheduling tool, so they certainly aren’t discouraging this behaviour.
Are There Downsides To Using Twitter Post Scheduling Tools?
Twitter post scheduler tools offer some fantastic benefits.
They make it easier to post more consistently. They help you post at the best
time, even if you aren’t at your computer. And they take the time out of
constantly going back and forth between social platforms creating posts.
But it isn’t all roses for social media scheduling.
Scheduled posts can be quite transparent. They can feel quite generic because they were constructed ahead of time. And oftentimes they won’t get the same level of engagement as in-the-moment tweets.
Scheduled posts can also end their posters in hot water. The timeliness of the social internet means everyone expects your tweets to be highly contextual. If your post accidentally makes an unintended reference to a piece of news that came out the day it was scheduled, you may come across as insensitive, or ignorant of what is going on.
If you are scheduling your content, you still need to be on top of what you are posting. This means checking in daily. Considering each time you check-in whether your scheduled tweets are still relevant, and taking into account new trends, news, and events.
Finally, scheduled posts can easily result in lower engagement.
If you aren’t online when you are posting, it is easy to forget that there is a conversation going on that you are meant to be a part of. Twitter is meant to be used as a two-way form of communication. By “setting and forgetting” your tweet schedule, you may not be fostering the type of community you intended.
All that said, if you do choose to schedule your tweets (and it can be super helpful), there are some great Twitter post scheduling tools to help you along the way.
Free Twitter Post Scheduling Tools
Here are the top 6 Free Twitter post schedulers:
HootsuiteBufferTweetDeckTwitterTwittimerSocialOomph
There is a tonne of Twitter scheduling tools available online. And better yet, if you are just looking to schedule a few tweets, and nothing more, most of these tools are free to use.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is probably one of the most well-known social media scheduling tools, and for good reason.
It offers social media scheduling across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram. In addition to the scheduling capability, Hootsuite has a whole host of other tools and capabilities including the ability to see mentions, your follower feed, and manage inboxes across multiple social accounts.
To make the most of Hootsuite’s capabilities, most users must pay for a plan, but there are free options for those who are just starting or want to give it a try.
Schedule platforms:
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, & Instagram (limited to 3 on the free
plan)
Tweet schedule limit: 30
2. Buffer
The free version of Buffer lets you connect 3 social media accounts, from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram.
While similar tools offer the same number of scheduled tweets, the benefit with Buffer is that you don’t need to schedule content from within Buffer if you use their plugin. While you are on Twitter, you will notice that there is the option to Buffer a tweet, so you can schedule tweets in advance from within Twitter itself.
It is also a well-maintained tool, that offers users a range of plans when they do grow. So if you think you might want to upgrade to schedule content across multiple platforms in the future, Buffer could be a good scheduler to trial.
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, & Instagram
Tweet schedule limit: 10
3. TweetDeck
TweetDeck is being developed by Twitter, so their integration and capabilities work seamlessly with Twitter. The downside is, while TweetDeck used to allow you to schedule to other social media platforms, it now only lets you schedule Tweets.
If you have ever used Hootsuite, you will see some familiar features in TweetDeck. The tool allows you to not only schedule Tweets, but it also lets you view streams of your content, your followers’ content, engagement, and messages. It is a great all-round tool for Twitter management.
If you are looking to manage your Twitter presence, and nothing more, this is probably the right tool for you.
Twitter
4. Twitter
Twitter themselves do also offer a tweet scheduling tool. Their tool allows you to schedule tweets up to a year in advance.
To access this tool, however, you will need to sign up for Twitter advertising by visiting From there, you will need to provide credit card details before you will be able to access their tweet scheduler.
If you are willing to provide your credit card information,
the scheduling tool is a good simple scheduling tool.
I’d recommend this tool to users who are (for some reason)
only posting to Twitter. As there are plenty of other free tweet scheduling tools
that also allow you to schedule content across other platforms. It is also only
possible for people who have a credit card and are willing to sign up for
Twitter ads.
A perk of signing up to Twitter Ads, however, is that you gain access to follower demographics and engagement data. So even if you don’t want to use Twitter’s scheduler, you can access analytics without providing credit card information.
Tweet schedule limit: unlimited
5. TwitTimer
TwitTimer offers a free version that allows you to schedule up to 10 posts.
One of the benefits of TwitTimer over other platforms, however, is their ability to schedule content across more than just Twitter. TwitTimer also allows you to schedule content on LinkedIn and Facebook.
But with such a limited number of scheduled posts available to free users, the benefit of scheduling content is a little lost with TwitTimer.
Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook
6. SocialOomph
Previously known as TweetLater, Social Oomph has been providing tweet scheduling capabilities to its users since 2008.
The free tool allows you to schedule tweets, track keywords,
shorten links, view your mentions and retweets and do all of this across
multiple Twitter accounts.
The downside of this tool, however, is that if you want to work across more than just Twitter, you will have to pay. The interface also doesn’t appear to have been updated in many years, so if you are looking for a great user experience, this might not be the tool for you.
The Final Verdict?
Each tweet scheduler has its own set of pros and cons, so your decision will come down to what matters most to you.
If you just want to schedule tweets, and nothing more, I think your best option is: TweetDeck.
But if you want to schedule content across multiple social media platforms, I recommend Hootsuite.
How Do I Schedule Posts?
Just about all of the above scheduling tools will have video explainer videos and step by step instructions on how to schedule a tweet. For the most part, they all work the same way:
1. Sign up to the scheduler and link your twitter
Signing up to any of the above platforms is typically as
simple as providing a few contact details and authenticating your Twitter
account.
Of course, you’ll have to sign in to Twitter as well so that the scheduling tool can be sure that you have the authority to schedule tweets for that account.
2. Navigate to the scheduler
You may start on an account details or homepage. Simply navigate to the section of the tool for scheduling to get started.
3. Write your tweet
In the scheduling tool, there will be a text box where you can type your tweet. Many of these free scheduling tools will limit your tweet length to that of Twitters, so you can be sure your entire post will be scheduled. Don’t forget to include relevant hashtags!
4. Add media
After writing your tweet most tools will provide you with an “upload image” or “add media” button. Click this button to upload the image or media you want to include with your tweet. Make sure you add any relevant links also.
5. Select your post time
Most tools will have a drop-down calendar that lets you select the month, time, and day that you want your post to be scheduled. Just make sure that the time zone selected is your own so that your post goes out when expected.
6. Click schedule
Simply hit schedule and you are done!
7. Monitor your tweets
Many of these free tools will provide you with a tab to see your scheduled tweets. From there most will allow you to edit or delete your scheduled tweets in case you change your mind about the content.
If you want to see success from Twitter, you are going to need to be live on the platform occasionally. Ideally, you will interact with your followers and other commenters. This is the whole reason for ‘social’ media after all.
Author
Amy Baker
Digital Marketer And Creator Of Content Career.
12 Twitter Automation Tools – Scheduling, Followers & More
Social media marketing often costs a ton of time. To keep your Twitter account active, open and responsive means that you invest a minimum of effort on a daily basis. And still, you can be successful on Twitter while you focus on your main job that most of the time is something totally different from running a Twitter account: You just need the right Twitter automation is a ton of different Twitter automation software to help you keep your social media marketing on track – but you need to understand what you want your accounts to do and how they look when you automate at least some of your Media marketing automation can be very helpful – or rather it can be the key to success. Especially on Twitter, where it is most important to keep up consistent activity automation is almost are 9 tools to help you master all your Twitter tasks and free up your time for other things to do. We always recommend to tweet more and engage more on your Twitter account and these tools help you get it done. 1. Buffer – Twitter Post SchedulerBuffer was one of the first Twitter tools I ever used – and I still use it. Buffer is Twitter post scheduler with a very useful free account to schedule tweets. As simple as that sounds, so important this be successful on Twitter you need to tweet and be active all day long. But who can sit in front of the computer and concentrate on Twitter activity all day long? Often you only have a couple of minutes a day to handle all your social media tasks. Since you don’t want your Twitter account to be only active for a couple of minutes and otherwise be silenced, scheduling tweets is a Source: BufferAnd Buffer is the number one solution for scheduling new tweets every day. Simply put your tweets into Buffer instead of putting them directly on Twitter. Set your schedule and Buffer will send your tweets at your set times. For up to 10 tweets at a time Buffer is a great free Twitter automation software to get you Tip: Always make sure that your tweet includes an image. Tweets without image get far less attention on Twitter. While on Twitter you have to explicitly upload an image – Buffer can pull an image from the content you link in your tweet. This way tweeting links with an image is much easier if you tweet via Buffer than directly on from scheduling, Buffer also offers some great analytics that will provide you with insights into which of your posts get engagement or traffic. Since Buffer offers the analytics part in a separate product, it is worth to check the 14-day trial for Buffer analytics if you are using the scheduling part. 2. SocialOomph – Twitter Post AutomationSocialOomph is another Twitter post scheduler that takes scheduling to the next level. You can set up a queue of tweets and an interval at which you want tweets to go out on your Twitter account. Now SocialOomph can use up the complete list of tweets – and then start again at the beginning of the type of recurring queue of tweets is extremely useful for bloggers and content marketers who have a huge reservoir of evergreen and relevant content which they can use in tweets for the Source: SocialOomphWarning: To comply to Twitter rules, you have to make sure that you are not repeating updates more often than every 48hours. That means you either need a considerable amount of different tweets or you should consider adding some other content to your Twitter account in between. Recurring queues of tweets are still great if you want to make sure to get the maximum results for your evergreen content by keeping these posts active on Twitter. If you do not have enough evergreen content to keep your Twitter account active with these alone, you can easily combine a recurring queue on SocialOomph with freshly scheduled tweets on Tip: You can make more tweets our of your content if you create more than one tweet per post. Make sure that each tweet has a unique tweet text and use different images for each of the tweets. By creating more than one tweet per post you can easily multiply the number of tweets you have for your evergreen content and that you can use in your recurring queue with curring queues allow you to tweet on autopilot and focus your work time on more important tasks. 3. Tweepi – Follower Management ToolTweepi is a tool that allows you to find targeted people on Twitter you want to follow much easier and even makes the unfollowing process a lot you have been active on Twitter for a while, you have probably followed a couple of accounts. After a while quite a few of these accounts that you follow have probably become inactive, some turned to spam. You want to unfollow these. Tweepi allows you to easily find the inactive people and allows you to easily unfollow them directly from the Tweepi used to be a couple of tools that allowed you to find and follow people to help you grow your Twitter account. Twitter closed their API for most of these tools because too much spammy behavior was going on with the help of these is one of the few tools that can still help you to find and follow targeted Twitter accounts from your niche. Tweepi lets you choose a couple of hashtags and Twitter accounts from competitors or experts from your niche to identify interested tweeps. You can now either put these tweeps on a Twitter list and follow them on Twitter or visit Twitter from the Tweepi interface and follow the tweeps Tip: There is more to the follow-unfollow-routine than blindly following thousands of Twitter accounts. There are rules you need to follow. And no, this is not considered spam if you do it right. And you would not be the first to start growing on Twitter with this method – a ton of social media influencers have successfully used this method before is the only tool that we know of right now that still allows you to somewhat automate the follow-unfollow routine on uses a trick to avoid Twitter API automation other follow unfollow tools struggled with: They do not follow any Twitter accounts. They give you suggestions for people to follow and if you decide to follow an account Tweepi puts this account on a Twitter list. You can then go to Twitter and follow all people on that Twitter is free to use for small Twitter accounts. Only when you already have a huge following, Tweepi gets fairly small Twitter accounts Tweepi’s free account should be sufficient. 4. AgoraPulse – Social Media Management ToolIf you are looking for a tool with a ton of flexible scheduling options for Twitter than SocialOomph, AgoraPulse should be on your can schedule a post for a fixed date and can “schedule again” the same post multiple can set up queues of posts that will go out once, multiple times, or can create different categories of queues for your different posting can also schedule content on the go via the mobile app. I admit that I have never tried AgoraPulse for scheduling. We have always used our recurring queues via SocialOomph – and every time I have tried another tool for scheduling our evergreen content as for instance MeedEdgar I was disappointed or the tool could not do what I was promised or the features had changed for the worse due to Twitter API I needed to move our Twitter scheduling away from SocialOomph for any reason, AgoraPulse would be the first tool I would try. 5. Social Juke BoxFormerly known as Tweet Juke Box, Social Juke Box is another scheduling tool that you can use for Twitter. Instead of storing tweets in queues, you can store them in Juke Boxes. You can set a schedule or intervals at which you want the tool to post updates out of your Juke Box. Once the Juke Box has posted all updates it starts all over again. That is very similar to recurring queues on can create a number of different Juke Boxes and post to one account from various Juke addition to your own Juke Boxes you can also get access to additional pre-filled Juke Boxes for various topics and types of posts. For instance, you can choose a Juke Box filled with quotes from your niche mix your tweets to your blog posts with quotes to increase engagement. 6. Personal Auto DM – Automated MessagingLet me guess: You either thought that automated direct messages on Twitter are spam or that they are ither is there were a ton of spammy direct messages in the past – they still are. And many tools had to shut down their automatic direct message features. But there is at least one tool around that can still send automated direct messages to your new followers on tool is called Personal Auto tool works directly with Twitter’s API and sends a personalized predefined message to all your new followers. It allows you to send up to 250 messages per day which is more than enough for the average Twitter rsonal Auto DM delays the direct message up to 30 minutes after someone followed you so that the message does not look instant. The tool will make sure that every Twitter account just gets ONE icing for Personal Auto DM starts at 3. 99$7. Since Twitter no longer provides just a chronological feed but also gives its users top tweets and recommendations based on it gets more and more important to increase engagement on Twitter due to the changes to the Twitter feed, may be worth to take a provides you with ideas which tweets you could engage with, which content inspires engagement and which people are actively engaging on Twitter. That is a good start to increase your engagement! 8. – Content CurationI already wrote about the importance of tweeting a lot and scheduling these tweets. To satisfy your need for content on Twitter while you do not have an endless reservoir of own content, content curation is the find great content to share can be a lot more efficient and less time consuming if you use the right tool. is one of these tools that you can easily use to automatically tweet content for you have some sources you trust, you can connect the RSS feed of that source and use to automatically create a tweet when the source publishes new content. You can either directly tweet the update or send it to your Buffer and fill your schedule there. 9. Quuu – Content CurationAnother tool to help you be more efficient with your content curation is Quuu. It will help you find content based on keywords and topics. Quuu will do the job that is normally yours of reviewing the content if it is really good enough to share via your social media accounts. Similar to you can have the content sent to your Buffer to fill up your Tweet schedule. 10. Twitter ListsTwitter lists may not be the most “automated” feature or tool on Twitter. But they can be extremely can sort your followers into lists – small business, customers, competitors, influencers – whatever makes you can treat them according to their meaning to you. Monitor what the people talk about on Twitter, see what kind of content they publish, answer relevant tweets, like tweets, engage and connect. 11. TweetDeck – Twitter ClientAs with Twitter lists, you could dispute me whether the Twitter client TweetDeck is an automation tool. But a lot of tasks of Twitter marketing like searching for relevant conversations, following your lists and monitoring keywords can be a TweetDeck, these tasks can become fairly easy and much more efficient. Simply set up a column for each Twitter list you want to follow (it does not even have to be your own Twitter list) or keywordsyou want to you can have a quick overview of relevant tweets and join into whatever conversation from your niche and engage with the right way TweetDeck can also be used as a tool for content discovery and make your content curation a lot easier. 12. IFTTT – Automate multiple tools togetherIf you want other automation on Twitter, IFTTT (=If This Than That) may be the answer. You can set up almost any kind of rule for automation with IFTTT. Just keep in mind that you should not automate everything just because you allows you to set up various rules if you combine it with other Twitter you need some ideas about what you can do with IFTTT on Twitter check out the Twitter applets on give you an idea of how powerful IFTTT for Twitter can be, here are some ideas on how to use it:Add everybody who mentions you on Twitter to a Twitter listGet a notification when someone tweetsTweet an update at the beginning of a monthSend a tweet with your newest blog post once you publish itThere is a lot more you can do with IFTTT – browse around these recipes or set up your can be used to perform Twitter automations like of Twitter retweet IFTTT can automate almost anything – but social media is still about being social. Some automation is rather dangerous and can turn your accounts into robots. This could hurt your marketing results. So, whatever you do monitor your results. And never forget to add a human touch to your social activities. I admit I am a fan of marketing automation on Twitter. Without automation and the help of tools, we could never have the Twitter marketing success that we have. But I strongly recommend, that you learn Twitter first and only automate what you understand how it should work – and not automate just because you can. Your results will be much our free Email Course to learn how to grow an audience and traffic from Twitter:All the basics in 4 Days, 4 Emails!
Frequently Asked Questions about free twitter automation
How can I automate my tweets for free?
Here are the top 6 Free Twitter post schedulers:Hootsuite.Buffer.TweetDeck.Twitter.Twittimer.SocialOomph.Feb 20, 2019
Can I automate my Twitter account?
Simply put your tweets into Buffer instead of putting them directly on Twitter. Set your schedule and Buffer will send your tweets at your set times. For up to 10 tweets at a time Buffer is a great free Twitter automation software to get you started. Extra Tip: Always make sure that your tweet includes an image.May 26, 2020
How do you automate Twitter followers?
How to auto follow on TwitterCreate a free Phantombuster account.Give the URLs of the Twitter profiles you want to auto follow.Choose to follow or unfollow the profiles.Specify the number of profiles to process per launch.Set the Phantom on repeat.More items…
