Twitter automation is a risky proposition, one with large payoffs or losses for users. Enter Tweet Adder, a very powerful tool, one which can benefit businesses on twitter. As is common with complex marketing software that seems simple, new users don’t take the time to learn best practices and shoot themselves in the foot. A very similar software, Tweet Attacks, was forced out of business by Twitter after it became the spammer tool du jour. Think twice before buying Tweet Adder: the software may be inoperative if Twitter puts enough money behind its lawyers. They are defendants in a lawsuit alongside Tweet Attacks. This is about anti-spam PR for Twitter as much as anything else, and they have little choice but to go after the company that sells the application, Skootle Corporation of Tennessee.
But don’t ignore Tweet Adder because you don’t have the time to figure it out or are concerned it’s only alive for another four months. Hire someone to use it on your behalf. It’s the most powerful software for building a large base of meaningful followers, we just don’t know how much longer that will be possible before savvy social media companies have to create expensive in-house scripts that aren’t for sale and fly under the Twitter radar. Large, enterprise social media management tools such as WildFire cost thousands a month and are less sophisticated in their follow/unfollow capabilities. There’s a simple reason, one they won’t admit: they do not want to upset Twitter, as most of these companies are in a large, hugely profitable space. Ironically, this means most agencies managing Twitter accounts for clients are less efficient when they use robust, all-in-one solutions. And most of the little guys using the tool think it’s just for the little guy: they don’t work with clients that have large potential audiences and are in the position to leverage the targeting capabilities.
Targeting by keyword with Tweet Adder
Herein lies the holy grail of the software. It allows auto following, in large numbers in a responsible, targeted manner that does no harm and upsets no one on the micro-blogging Site. If you do business locally, it creates lists of Twitter accounts not only by keywords in profiles, but also by the location of accounts. A recruiting company in Philadelphia looking for PHP programmers, for example, can find all users in the city who use those words in their profile.
Where most users go wrong, is their slash and burn approach, following the first 100 people with tweets that have meaningful keywords, and unfollowing after 2 days if there is no reciprocation. Using a keyword in a tweet it all but meaningless. What is the sentiment of the tweet? Perhaps you want to find people that mention “theatre productions.” Unfortunately, if you use automation, you don’t know someone shared a post stating mow much they hate theatre productions. Furthermore, some Twitter account managers using the product find their accounts banned because they are running auto-processes for too many accounts from the same IP address (fact: Twitter client account managers have to buy private proxies if they want to login to more than one client account at a time).
Adding by location
Perhaps the most laser-targeted way to auto-follow is to find who competitors follower, generate a list of them with Tweet Adder, follow all of them day by day, and unfollow those tracked by the software logs that do not reciprocate. That seems pretty simple, but again it requires someone with experience using the tool to be sure the target list is clean. If your business only has ten direct competitors in the country, finding a way to data mine all their followers is a bit complex, but the pay-off is tremendous.
Auto Posting, a lesser form of spamming
One way Tweet Adder is mis-used is when people try to auto-post with it. There is no benefit here over using RSS to Twitter tools. And like spammy follow/unfollow practices; it’s the fastest way to get people tuned-out from your stream. With no content curation, auto posting will create dumb looking Tweets.
Why Twitter wants to make an example of automation tools
Spam software almost caused the death of email, and social media sharing is, in many ways, a one to many version of email messaging or instant messaging. Spammers threaten to ruin user experience on Twitter and other social networks by drowning out meaningful tweets with noise. Twitter couldn’t find an algorithmic way to silence the spammers, so they took the old school route to battling offenders: they sued the software companies that made the spamming tools for the masses. That includes Tweet Adder, who is putting up a fight against the San Francisco company, claiming it is not sold for irresponsible use.
