Madalyn Sklar

Maximizing Productivity with Twitter Automation

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Maximizing Productivity with Twitter Automation - #TwitterSmarter chat with Warwick Brown

What’s the most important thing in business? Retention (among other things). Managing existing customer accounts is an art not everyone is a master of. Warwick Brown is. And he’s skilled at teaching account managers how they can use the internet and social media to make their work easier.

Naturally, we had to ask him—will Twitter make us productive? Sure, it’s great fun to participate in chats, meet new people, follow up with friends, check in with accountability partners, and learn a ton of stuff, But does it all pay off in the end?

Well, it does. Here’s a summary of our chat with Warwick.

Guest: Warwick Brown
Topic: Maximizing Productivity with Twitter Automation
Format: 8 questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: Can Twitter make you more productive?

Well, let’s make a list and see for ourselves.

  1. Getting involved in Twitter is a piece of cake. You don’t even have to sign up with an email and password.
  2. Get notifications for important updates, even if you’re not on Twitter all day.
  3. Search for pretty much anything tweeted out—at any time—across Twitter, and save that search result for later.
  4. Compile important tweets as Moments or threads, and collect user profiles using lists.
  5. Coupled with the right automation tools, improving productivity is a given. Madalyn Sklar endorses, Twitter Advanced Search, Social Jukebox, Agorapulse, Hootsuite, and Buffer to start.Oh, and if all that weren’t enough,
  6. Get great native analytics from Twitter, including geographical data, browsing preferences, age group, and so much more of your audience.

So can Twitter make you productive? Hell, yes!

But—

Like all things social media, Twitter can become a time sink too. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself distracted and wasting a long of time.

As Jim says, if you know why you’re on Twitter, have a strategy, and manage your time well, Twitter can be priceless.

Look at Michele, for example. Though overwhelming at times, she says Twitter helps her find useful content that improves her productivity at work.

Q2: What are some ways to use automation on Twitter?

So now that we’ve established that Twitter’s an incredible resource, we wanted to know how to use Twitter to automate some of our everyday activities.

If you’re wondering, like we did, how you missed the scheduler Warwick mentions, don’t worry. You didn’t miss it. We learnt later in the chat that Warwick uses the scheduling feature in the Twitter Media Studio. Pretty sneaky feature, too, as a lot of our chatters admitted.

There’re other scheduling tools as well—like Tweet Deck, Buffer, and Hootsuite. And you can automate various kinds of tweets too, like Jay suggests. You can schedule promotional content, evergreen blog posts, upcoming events. What’s more, scheduling is a great way to A/B test and identify that ideal time period when you get maximum engagement.

As always, Gene makes some great points too.

You can schedule posts that spark conversations—like a poll, an opinion, or a quote. Just make sure you’re online to respond to all the responses you receive.

Q3: When is automation on Twitter not OK?

Is it possible to get too excited and overdo the automation? Yes, it is!

Our community is highly spirited about this particular type of automation. No one likes those pesky direct messages. They’re unprofessional and downright creepy.

It’s important to understand that the foundation of Twitter lies in real-time conversations and relationships. Dan puts quite it well.

Automation is important. Good even in many cases. But you have to know how to handle it well to get the most benefit. Dr. Dorrie’s advice is golden. Set aside a certain time block every day to check notifications, respond to engagement, and nurture existing relationships.

All things said, however, if you’re depending too much on automation, you’ll destroy the social element of social media that we all love and cherish. You don’t want that.

Oh, and a friendly reminder from Alberto—don’t litter, people.

Q4: Apart from scheduling tweets, how else can you automate on Twitter?

Scheduling tweets can’t be the only automation. We wondered if there’re other ways to use automation on Twitter—ways we weren’t aware of.

Imagine automating messages, retweets, follows, and unfollows. And getting alerts for mentions. And responding to mentions. Yes, you can do all that and more. With the power of third-party integrations, you can link your Twitter account with other software and perform actions on those.

As always, Madalyn shares some secrets not many of us didn’t know:

The Twitter Ads platform and the Media Studio let you schedule posts, even if you’re not running ads. As long as you add a credit card, you’re good to go.

Q5: What automation tools can you use on Twitter? Tag them.

Since Warwick spoke about integrations and third-party apps, we wanted to know details. So tell us, Warwick, what tools do you use exactly?

Ah, the usual suspect. Hootsuite, as we now know, is great for scheduling tweets. But Warwick also uses Microsoft’s Power BI to extend his Twitter analytics. And of course, Zapier and IFTTT for integrations. In case you’re wondering, IFTTT stands for “If This Then That”— fun and self-explanatory, eh?

We also learnt that Nuzzel is a nifty little tool for compiling tweets into comprehensive newsletters that you can shoot out to your subscribers.

And of course, you can’t miss Madalyn’s tools for smart working.

Q6: What are some ways to use Zapier?

During the course of the chat, we realised that a lot of folks in our community weren’t using Zapier all that much. Luckily, Warwick knew enough that he could teach us.

Zapier is an integration tool. Like a link chain, if you will. It binds any two of your apps and passes information between them. This connection you create is called a Zap. Warwick uses Twitter + Google Sheets to push his tweets into a spreadsheet. That way, when he needs to get down to some serious work, he can access all important tweets in a single place without having to search through Twitter or getting distracted by his feed.

Similarly, he uses other social media Zaps like Twitter + Facebook and Twitter + Instagram so that posts with specific hashtags are simultaneously posted on the other platforms as well. Now that’s effortless cross-posting.

Q7: How do you use IFTTT to be more efficient on Twitter?

Ok, brilliant Zapier examples. Now let’s talk about IFTTT.

IFTTT has a bunch of default connections—or “Applets” as they’re called.

Applets are grouped into categories based on audience. Some examples include lifestyle Applets like reminders to drink water, notifications to meet your exercise goals; small business Applets like adding a draft to WordPress from Evernote, tracking work hours in your calendar, getting notifications for payments processed; and marketing Applets like syncing Dropbox files to your Google Drive, adding new contacts to an Airtable database, posting Instagram photos as native tweets, and so much more.

There’re more categories like photography, music, and voice assistants. Sound interesting? Check out their website and take IFTTT for a spin. Perhaps, like Warwick, you can also update your Twitter profile picture automatically every time you change it on Facebook!

Q8: Zapier vs. IFTTT – when do you choose which?

It’s crucial to know when to do what. Warwick explains,

With Zapier, you get to build the Zap you want. If you have a plan for how you want to integrate your apps, then Zapier is great at doing what you envision.

IFTTT, however, is more relaxed. It comes with thousands of ideas you can use right away or gather inspiration from.

Each has its own merits. Both are fun to try and helpful in saving time and increasing productivity. But when it comes to serious business, you need to choose. Or not. 🙂

There you have it. A wonderful conversation and a whole lot of of learning, summarized as best as I could. But there’s more, too. Check out this Twitter Moment for more great responses to these questions.

And as always, if you have any thoughts or questions, just leave a note.

Ciao.

About me, Narmadhaa:

I’m a writer of all things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.

Say hello: Personal blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

 

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