7 Powerful Twitter Apps You Need To Work On Autopilot

Social media marketing is a powerful means by which to build your online profile and your business.

Wouldn’t you agree?

I mean, everyone you know is online right? Even my 70 year old mother is on Facebook and Google Plus!

Doing business online these days is Doing Business. It’s no longer a marketing channel that we can take or leave.

So if you’re not engaged in marketing your goods and services through social media effectively, then you’re lagging behind a significant trend.

For me, and 320 million others it’s all about Twitter.

I started taking Twitter seriously less than 12 months ago, after being on the platform since 2009.

And when I began to do so…. BOOM!

Following and engagement went through the roof.

In about 11 months, I went from a measly 300 followers to 20k, ethically (i.e. without buying followers).

This growth is by no means unique or exceptional, you can easily achieve this level of growth and beyond just by utilizing a couple of third party Twitter apps.

In fact the growth I’ve seen is pale in comparison to what some others are currently experiencing.

The thing is, with this system I’m going to show you, the larger your account the greater the growth, it’s exponential.

Take a look at Jeff Bullas’ Twitter growth. His growth is pretty similar to mine only on a huge scale. #Awesomeness.

When I decided I wanted to use Twitter in my business, I realized the first thing I needed to do was build a large and targeted following.

I figured I needed some help to make that happen, and through trial and error I found 7 apps that I continue to use to build my Twitter account. Most of which work automatically.

If you’re wondering how to get ahead on Twitter and start building a strong and highly targeted following, you’re going to find out how to do that here.

But before we break it down…

Reader Bonus; Grab your FREE copy of “How To Get Twitter On Autopilot eBook” which contains bonus material only available free to Jeff’s Readers.

Here’s a couple of reasons you should get serious about Twitter

1. Twitter is a big player with 320m monthly active users
2. Twitter has 1bn unique visits each month
3. 79% of Twitter users are outside the United States
4. Twitter is available in 35 languages
5. 80% of these 320m monthly active users, access the app via mobile

Jeff posted an article here on the blog a little while back outlining further interesting stats on Twitter. It’s a very interesting read so you might want to check it out.

In a recent article on the future of SEO that I read on Hubspot, the author, Meghan Keaney Anderson, demonstrated how social media channels are becoming search engines unto themselves.

They are becoming so large that in the near future, they will occupy very large portions of searches, with users not so reliant on the big players like Google, Yahoo and Bing as sources of information.

There is evidence that social media channels are already gearing their platforms in this direction. No better reason to get serious about Twitter than that eh?

What these 7 Twitter apps will help you do

You’re still here, awesome!

These apps are pretty powerful. Let’s explore what they’re gonna help you with…

1. How to find highly specific curated content your Twitter followers want to read

People don’t only want to read your stuff, in fact it’s good to maintain a ratio of between 5:1 or 7:1 of other’s content : your content.

Sharing other people’s content allows you to connect with those influencers and establish valuable connections. Besides, you don’t have all the answers, your followers will appreciate the varied opinions and views you share.

2. How to Tweet your curated content around the clock 24/7/365 at times you choose

The world is always awake. As you go to bed someone else is getting up, so while you sleep take advantage of the international audience of 320m monthly active Twitter users by sending out relevant content around the clock.

3. How to Tweet your own content on rotation 24/7/365 at specific intervals

There are many sharing tools for WordPress, and they all pretty much allow you to send your content to Twitter automatically when you hit “Publish”. But what about after that?

Don’t let your best stuff languish in the archive! I’m going to show you a cool little plugin (Twitter App #7 below) that shares your articles and pages on a constant rotation at the intervals you set.

4. How to find and follow highly targeted real Twitter accounts

This is the one that’s really going to fire your following into orbit. I’ve got two tools to show you, that you can use to find real Twitter accounts and follow them automatically.

I’ll also show you how to unfollow accounts that don’t follow you back within a set time frame that you decide.

Don’t Be A Robot!

Before we jump into the detail (and there’s a lot of detail), I should say up front;

Automation is great, I use it all the time and it makes my work so much easier, but it cannot and should not, replace direct engagement with followers.

Too many Twitter accounts are on 100% autopilot and you can tell. I’m always looking at my account and modifying my strategy to try and stay as relevant as possible.

That personal touch is a vital component of any successful marketing and is the foundation of a solid business.

I suggest you jump on Twitter 3 or 4 times a day and check for mentions etc. Say thanks and engage with your followers directly and you’ll reap the rewards.

When someone Tweets my stuff, I Tweet them back with this thank you image;

Yeah OK, it might seem a bit cheesy but I just think it’s a nice thing to do. I have the photo saved to my iOS library so Tweeting it out when I’m on the go is easy.

I stuck in the “Sent Manually” badge to let people know I sent it myself without automation. It generally goes down very well, you should try it!

I created this using Canva. Here’s what you need to do…

1. Go to canva.com and sign up for an account.
2. Select the default “Twitter Post” image.
3. Design it as you require and download it to your computer in .jpg format.
4. From your computer, reply to the nice person that Retweeted your stuff attaching the Thank You image.
5. Go to Twitter on your mobile phone and find the Tweet you just sent out.
6. Open and save the image to your phone.

You now have the image in your phone’s image library to share later with other nice people.

The Twitter apps you need to be using

Now, we finally get to the juicy bit…

The Twitter Apps I’ve used to grow my follower count by over 7000% inside 12 months.

Some of these you may already be familiar with, others you may not have heard of, or, you have and you’re not using them right now.

Some are paid, although they are not very expensive, and some are free. Used together they will make a huge difference to your Twitter Marketing efforts.

Powerful Twitter App #1 – ManageFlitter

ManageFlitter is perhaps the most powerful tool of those I’ll show you here, for growing a targeted Twitter following.

You can sign up for a free account here, and test things out, but if you really want to access the strength of this tool then you need to get a pro plan @ $12 per month.

Here’s how I use it;

I login to my account every morning and I unfollow accounts that have not followed me back in the last 3 days.

Then, I go into “Power Mode” where I have my filters set up and I choose about 200 to 500 accounts to follow.

Yeah, Jeff is in my filters so chances are if you follow Jeff I’m following you!

The more followers you have, then the more you can follow, but Twitter doesn’t allow you to follow more than 1,000 per day. If you have a small following, it’s much less than this.

If you happen to breach Twitter follow limits ManageFlitter will warn you. If this occurs then don’t follow those additional accounts…. for now.

Here’s some of the things you can use ManageFlitter to do;

1. Find and follow users who follow influencers in your specific niche
2. Unfollow users who don’t follow you back within the time frame you set
3. Find and block spam accounts, dormant and irrelevant accounts following you
4. Search for Twitter users by keyword or hashtag in Tweets or their bio
5. Setup promotional Tweets including Twitter Cards on a schedule to go out when your audience is most active
6. Keep tabs on your account and tweet analytics

If you’d like to find out how to use ManageFlitter to the greatest effect, go check out this in depth ManageFlitter tutorial I put together which shows you exactly how to use the tool.

Powerful Twitter App #2 – Narrow

Narrow.io is a tool I kind of discovered by accident. It’s compact and low on features and that’s not a bad thing.

I think it’s one of the best little Twitter tools out there.

From within the user dashboard you can choose hashtags and keywords for your chosen niche, and decide if you want Narrow.io to look for these in Tweets or in Twitter bios.

Narrow.io will then find and follow real Twitter accounts and follow them on your behalf in an ethical and non aggressive manner.

Narrow.io is kind of a “steady as she goes” type of app that you can set up and watch it do it’s work. I’d highly recommend it.

Here’s some of the things you can do with Narrow.io;

1. Find and follow targeted users by keyword or hashtags
2. Find and follow users by Tweet or by Twitter bio
3. Like Tweets automatically based on keyword choice
4. Reset old likes so you don’t accumulate too many
5. Track the performance of your keywords
6. Manage multiple Twitter accounts from within the same Narrow account

And by the way, Jerad Maplethorpe is the dude behind the app and he’s a really nice guy!

A good enough reason to give it a whirl me thinks.

You can check out how to use Narrow.io and other cool stuff right here on their blog.

Linking 3 Apps To Do 1 Awesome Automation Job

The next three apps I’m going to show you, (Apps 3, 4 & 5) combine to add an awesome time saving content curation functionality to your Twitter Marketing efforts.

Check this out, I love how this works!

What we are going to do is link Feedly to IFTTT and then to Buffer to setup automated Tweets that are scheduled to go out at times you set, 24/7/365 just like this;

Powerful Twitter App #3 – Feedly

Feedly is an RSS feed aggregator that you can use to gather feeds from all your favorite blogs in one place.

It’s a handy tool that saves a lot of browsing time and I think it’s just a class app.

Here’s how to setup and use Feedly as part of our awesome trio;

Go to feedly.com and register your account. I’d recommend you sign in with your Google account if you have one. You’ll need a paid Feedly account to make this automation work, but the good news is it’s only 5 bucks a month.

If you happen to have signed up for Feedly a few years back you may not need to upgrade to pro. I made this automation happen without a pro plan because my account was open a long time.

When you’re signed in you’ll be presented with the screen below where you can begin adding content to your chosen categories.

Once you decide what blog RSS feeds to add to your account, add them here.

Feedly will show you a sample of the content from the blog you’ve added. If you are happy that it’s correct, click the green +feedly button to add it.

As you add new content, you will see a sidebar pop out from the left where you will be asked to add those feeds to a category.

Be sure to select categories that match the content you want to share. (This bit is important)

Example;

If you are in marketing you might want to add categories such as…

• Social Media
• Content Marketing
• SEO
• Analytics…. and so on.

Feedly will assign the feed you’ve added to a category automatically. If you are happy with this click “Add”. If not you can change it.

Continue to add your selected content until you build a substantial number of blogs in each category.

The more content you add, the better chance your Buffer feed will remain full. This is important and I’ll explain why later.

The categories I chose for my automation have feeds that publish every day, or multiple times per day so my queue in Buffer stays full all the time.

Now that you’ve set up categories in Feedly, we move to IFTTT.

Powerful Twitter App #4 – IFTTT (If This Then That)

IFTTT is a free web and mobile app that allows you to create automation between a range of other web apps “channels”. These automations are called “recipes”, which are triggered by particular conditions you preset.

Here’s an example;

So now let’s go setup the automation in IFTTT.

Note: You’ll need to set up a Buffer account “Awesome Plan” to make this work, so if you haven’t got a Buffer account you can set one up here. Then come back to this step.

Go to ifttt.com and set up an account.

You’ll need to add “channels” to IFTTT so you can link them to what IFTTT call “recipes”. Recipes allow you to create the twitter automation we’re looking for.

If you don’t add your channels at the start, don’t worry, you will be prompted to do so as you progress through the steps and create your first recipe.

When you’ve signed up and confirmed your email with IFTTT, you’ll be brought to the following screen.

Select “Create a Recipe”

In the following screen click the big blue “this” button.

1. Enter “Feedly” into the Choose Trigger Channel search.
2. Click the Feedly icon when it appears.

If you haven’t added Feedly as a channel you will be prompted to do so here.

After you successfully add the Feedly channel you will need to choose a trigger for your recipe. Select “New article from category”, as shown below.

1. Select one of the categories you created earlier in Feedly.
2. Click “Create Trigger” to proceed.

Next, click the big blue “that” button as highlighted below

Then, enter “Buffer” in the search bar. The Buffer icon will show in the search bar, click on it to proceed.

Then, choose the action “Add to Buffer ” for your recipe.

When you add your Buffer account to IFTTT, you will be asked to select which social media channel to queue your messages to – Select Twitter.

If you have not added Twitter to Buffer yet, you need to go and do that before proceeding. Then come back to this step.

The next step is where you will customize the message you send to your Buffer schedule (and subsequently to Twitter).

1. This is the short codes IFTTT will use to grab meta data from the RSS feed you set up in Feedly earlier.
2. This is the piece I spoke about earlier regarding hashtags. Manually type in a hashtag that represents the content from the feed you set up in your Feedly categories. This is why category specific content is important.
3. When you click on this icon, it shows you “ingredients” you can add to your “recipe”. {{ArticleTitle}} and {{ArticleTags}} are set by default, but you can add to, or change these completely.
4. When you are happy, click “Create Action”

Next you will see a summary of your new recipe.

I recommend that you uncheck the notifications box as shown below, because you don’t want to be notified every time this runs …. you’ll be driven mad with emails!

Click “Create Recipe” to complete linking Feedly > IFTTT > Buffer. Next we need to set up your buffer schedule.

Before we do, here’s a few things to consider when adding blog feeds in Feedly

• If you add a blog feed that publishes content every day, your Buffer feed can end up heavily weighted on that subject. Try to keep a balance of content in your Feedly categories.
• You could just create one category with all the feeds you want, but then you won’t be able to add category specific hashtags to your tweets, so be sure to add only specific content to each category in Feedly.
• If you need to change your RSS feed setup in Feedly you can do so by clicking “organize” in the left sidebar and reorganize there.
• Always check the feed content is good value and high quality, otherwise you could be sharing crappy content and it will do your image no good.
• Be mindful of date specific content. For example; if you queue up content that was released before St Patrick’s Day, and that article goes to your queue as you’ve intended, it might not be published to your twitter timeline for a week. That’s not good. You want date specific content to go out on or before that date.

Powerful Twitter App #5 – Buffer

Set Up Your Buffer Schedule.

Now it’s time to set up your Buffer Schedule. If you don’t have a Buffer account already, you’ll need to set that up.

Get an “Awesome Plan” so you can put this formula into action. I reckon it’s about $10 bucks.

You might be able to roll out this formula on the basic Buffer plan but I can’t see it working very well, because there’s just not enough scope in that plan to keep your queue topped up successfully.

When you’ve signed up, the first thing is to add your Twitter account.

Click Add Account + in the top left hand corner of your dashboard and add Twitter on the next screen as per the image below.

Next,

1. Go to your Buffer dashboard, and select your Twitter account in the left hand column.
2. Then click “Schedule” in the menu bar.

You can set your schedule whatever way suits you. I take the same sharing schedule Monday to Sunday, same times every day.

The more you study the activity of your audience, the better you can tailor this.

1. Next, click the “New Posting Schedule” tab and select Monday through to Sunday. As you can see from the image above, I post to Twitter 57 times in every 24 hour period.

You might think that’s too much, but when you consider how fast your followers’ Twitter streams move, it will be unlikely that they will catch any more than one or two of your tweets each hour.

As long as you don’t Tweet a bunch of updates in one foul swoop like many accounts do, you’re cool.

I tweet using this system roughly every 20 mins with frequency increased to every 10 mins or so at peak time (12:00 to 14:00).

This is why this formula works so well, you get to set the schedule as per your followers highest rate of activity.

To find out the best time to share your content, check out Optimal Sharing tool from Buffer. You’ll see when your audience is most active.

Once you set your Buffer schedule that’s it. Happy Days!

You can sit back now and watch your followers rolling in.. well not quite.

As I pointed out earlier in this article; with any platform, you need to engage your audience and that means getting involved in the conversation.

All we’ve done here is to tee up curated content that your followers want to read.

What this formula does is give you the time to engage in conversation, rather than spend hours scheduling tweets.

To start engaging with your followers, try getting involved in Twitter Chats.

Engagement will increase and you will be able to see this with Twitter Analytics or Twitter Counter or other Twitter measurement tools.

Powerful Twitter App #6 – Revive Old Post

Revive Old Post is a neat little WordPress plugin by ThemeIsle that I use to share my posts on Twitter on a constant loop.

The plugin finds the oldest content on my site and shares it, then continues to share my posts oldest first until it reaches the most current.

When it finishes sharing my articles it goes back to the earliest post and starts all over again.

Using this plugin allows me to keep sharing my content with my followers and avoids them gathering dust in the archives.

Another good reason to use it is that occasionally I’ll see an old post from maybe a year ago go out on Twitter and I’ll decide that it needs to be updated.

I might decide that it’s not up to scratch and I need to rewrite it. That way my stuff stays current and relevant.

Here’s some of the features of Revive Old Post;

• Share the title, excerpt, both or a custom field
• Decide on the max length of your Tweet
• Add additional text; I prefix each Tweet with “Miss this post?”
• Include a link; Yes/No
• Use your URL shortening service; I use bitly
• Add hashtags from each post or custom hashtags
• Add image to Tweet (Pro feature)
• Minimum age of post to be eligible
• Set interval for shares; I set mine to 20 mins
• Maximum age of post to be eligible
• Exclude categories and/or tags
• Share posts more than once; Yes/No

Social media channels you can share your content to;

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Xing
• Tumblr

I just share to Twitter with this tool.

There’s a pro version available for $75 but you should try out the free version for a while before you buy it.

Check it out, it’s a great tool.

Powerful Twitter App #7 – NextScripts SNAP

Finally, there’s NextScripts: Social Networks Auto Poster (SNAP)

This application is probably the least spoken about, but most awesome sharing plugin I’ve ever come across.

I’m sure there’s some reviews out there somewhere but I’ve just never read one for this plugin. Now that could be a bad thing, but I can assure you this plugin works great.

I’ve been using it for a couple of years now and I’ve never had any real problems using it, although I should say it’s tricky to setup initially.

Once you successfully connect your Twitter account to the NextScripts: Social Networks Auto Poster it will automatically share your new posts to all your networks in one foul swoop.

The plugin developer’s site is not pretty but you’ll find all the information you need to successfully setup the plugin.

I use it for all my social networks including Twitter and I think it’s great. You guys should definitely check it out.

Some Other Twitter Apps & Tools You Should Check Out

There’s a couple other Twitter applications I use, that I think you’ll get great benefit from. Utilizing these tools can really help your Twitter marketing efforts.

Twitter Cards

Yes you’ve probably heard about Twitter Cards and seen them in action, but if you’ve not enabled them on your site yet, then you definitely need to get that on your to-do list.

For the uninitiated;

Twitter Cards are basically a means of enhancing a tweet with media to build audience engagement with your content.

Fundamentally, there are two ways Twitter Cards can be generated;

1. Automatically create Twitter Cards when people share your stuff from your website.
2. Manually create Twitter Cards from within Twitter Ads for advertising campaigns.

In the screenshot below, you can see how your content might look when shared on Twitter with Twitter Cards enabled on your website.

As Jeff showed in a recent article here on the blog, his Tweets with images achieved 581% more engagement for him than those without.

Twitter posts with images win out big time over those without, so setting up the Twitter Card meta on your site should be a priority.

When Twitter Cards are set up on your website, your articles will include your featured image automatically when shared.

To find out how to setup Twitter Cards you can check out these resources;

Setting Up Twitter Cards Within Yoast SEO

Sprout Social Twitter Cards Guide

How To Use Twitter Cards For Lead Generation

Pablo (by Buffer)

Pablo is a great tool. I’m sure many people use it but I don’t come across too much commentary about it online.

It’s made by the folks at Buffer and is really easy to use. It’s basically a tool that allows you to create custom images with quotes and custom messages to share on your social media accounts.

No need to offer you instructions, you’ll figure it out easy enough. Go check it out.

Click to Tweet (by CoSchedule)

Another great tool, this time made by the folks at CoSchedule, is Click to Tweet. It is a WordPress Plugin that allows you add custom Tweet boxes to your content that encourage your readers to Tweet out your stuff.

Once you download, install and activate the plugin, you’ll see a little Twitter icon in the WordPress editor.

Click on it and add the text you want your visitors to Tweet out. It will look like this on the front end;

I love this tool, and as you can see, the Tweet boxes are very clean and the plugin is very easy to use. You can head over to CoSchedule and download the plugin free here.

It’s easy to install and not tricky to set up, just activate it from the WordPress admin area and the feature will be enabled in the post editor window.

Ok, so that’s all I’ve got for you guys. I hope the apps I’ve shown you above help you market better on Twitter.

What Twitter apps are you using? Let us know if you have better solutions to automating your Twitter Marketing, I’d love to hear it.

Reader Bonus; Grab your FREE copy of “How To Get Twitter On Autopilot eBook” which contains bonus material only available free to Jeff’s Readers.

Guest Author: Larry Maguire is a Content Marketing Professional & Online Business Strategist at larrygmaguire.com. He publishes content on The Content Marketing Blog & Podcast weekly and works with business owners to help establish a strong business presence online. Larry is known for highly detailed informative articles which you can catch on sites such as SEMrush, Kissmetrics and CoSchedule. He lives in Dublin, Ireland with his wife Joanne and three children.

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