Aseem Badshah
Twitter Automation Rules and Best Practices
First off, Twitter has a pretty clear policy around automation. It’s good to become familiar with these rules to plan your campaigns and social strategy accordingly. In general, you should comply with the following best practices.
- Don’t send Tweets, follow users or take actions based on machine-driven searches.
- Do schedule actions for specific people interested in your topic area.
Many people are regularly Tweeting clues about their problems and needs. Building a social media target persona is the first step to finding the individuals who may need your product or service. After this, you can use tools like HootSuite or Socedo to set up ongoing searches to find these prospects. Once you have identified these potential customers, the next step is to reach out to them.
In our article on How to Connect with a Lead Found on Social Media, we described the different approaches to reaching out to these folks. We will talk about how to automate and schedule some of these steps to use your time more efficiently and increase conversion rates. Essentially, we are bringing the concepts of drip marketing to Twitter.
Actions that can be Automated
The first step is to get on the radar of the prospective customer that you have identified. All of the following actions will notify your prospect and encourage them to learn more about you or your company.
- Favorite their Tweet – Do this on a Tweet that they sent related to the topic you can help with. That way, the prospect has some context when looking into your profile.
- ReTweet their Tweet – Like a favorite, you can associate your profile with something the prospect was already talking about. In this case, be sure your followers will find value in the Tweet that you share.
- Follow Them – This is great because it gives the prospect more credibility on Twitter, encouraging them to check out who you are and follow you back.
The next step is to start a conversation with the prospective customer. Two actions can be automated to do this:
- Send a Public Reply – Respond to their Tweet with a public Tweet and ask a follow-up question to start the conversation. These will be public on your profile, but the lead does not need to be following you to send this.
- Send a Direct Message – If the follows you, you can send a direct message with a follow-up question to start the conversation and build the relationship.
Using Twitter Automation to Connect with Potential Leads
Doing all of these actions manually can be quite time-consuming. This is where the automation piece comes in. Once a lead has been identified, you should schedule at least two of the initial actions spaced apart, so the lead gets notifications of your brand over time. This strategy gives you a better chance of getting seen and increases the likelihood that the prospective customer will follow you.
You’ll also want to have a conversation starter scheduled so you can begin to build a relationship with the lead. This needs to feel personal to get the prospect to respond. The template you use should include their first name and should be related to one of the Tweets the lead sent.
Many tools help you schedule Tweets and actions, including Buffer and SocialOomph. Socedo makes it easy to handle this process end-to-end. It discovers the lead and then automatically schedules all of your actions using the lead’s name and a template associated with the initial Tweet from the prospect you are pursuing.
This strategy will help supercharge your social media lead generation efforts while saving your time. It will also help you identify the leads interested in your product or service based on their actions back to you.
