Lifehack #1 - Automating Twitter Growth without Being Blocked by Twitter

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Anna Wiggins
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1 Lifehack #1 - Automating Twitter Growth without Being Blocked by Twitter Intro 2 Disclaimer 2 Important Caveats for Twitter Automation 2 Enter Azuqua 3 Getting Ready 3 Setup and Test your Connection! 4 Build a Tracking Table or Spreadsheet 4 Creating the Initial FLO (and test your connection to Twitter!) 5 Best Practices 7 Building the FLO 8 Google Sheets Version Build a One Row (+Header) Azuqua Table Update the Table with Daily Follower Count The Primary FLO 16 3a - Add a Control - Assign card 16 3b - Add a Now Card and Date to String card 17 3c - Check your Daily Follows 18 3d - Check your Follower Count 19 3e - Get the User Profile 20 3f - Search your Spreadsheet 21 3g - Wrap it Up! 23 3h - Final Notes 24 Azuqua Tables Version Add a Now Card and Date to String card Check your Daily Follows Get the User Profile First Check - Follower Count Search your Spreadsheet Wrap it Up! 26 Enhancement 28 Summary and Thanks 29

2 Intro This workbook will cover our first Lifehack which will focus on automating Twitter growth by leveraging the power of Azuqua FLOs. Personal brands in Social Media are every bit as important - perhaps sometimes more important - than just your company s corporate presence. Some of you may have used great product such as Socedo to build your brand. We recently discussed on our Connector podcast series, so today I m going to take that further and show you how Azuqua can help you automate your Twitter growth without being blocked by Twitter! Disclaimer This workbook illustrates how you can leverage Azuqua to provide automation around Twitter. Azuqua strongly encourages you to review and respect Twitter s Terms of Service prior to proceeding. Important Caveats for Twitter Automation If you ve used any automation tools with Twitter, you may already know that Twitter has been tightening the rules around automation. Some of this is in response to criticism over bot use during the last few years, particularly during the US election. Twitter - as any SaaS platform that s in good standing wants their users to have a good and authentic experience. That means they want to prevent excessive and improper automation and spamming hurt the platform. The downside is that most of us don t have hours a day to sit in front of Twitter to search for the correct people to follow. That s labor-intensive, so it s only fair to automate.

3 Enter Azuqua Good news is that Azuqua is a great Integration Platform as a Service (ipaas) that can solve this problem! We can solve this problem in a way that won t get you Blocked by Twitter! This workbook will walk you through the process of building out a FLO to do just this If you don t already have an Azuqua account, you can get a free 30-day trial immediately. Go to Fill out this form and you ll be up and running in minutes! Getting Ready Before you begin, you should make sure you ve completed the following steps: 1 - Get your Account Credentials You ll need these, of course, to create a Connection to YOUR Twitter account and Google Sheets if you re using that. If you re using a shared or corporate account, make sure that your team knows what you re doing! 2 - Determine Hashtags to Follow Pick one or two initial hashtags to follow (like #automation, or #DigitalTransformation). 3 - Login to Azuqua If you ve not already logged into Azuqua, make sure you login and review some of the in-app help. We recommend building a test FLO and reviewing some of our training material.

4 Setup and Test your Connection! So the first step is to create your Connection to your Twitter account. If you don t have it bookmarked: Go to or via Sign into the App Click Settings Go to Connections Click New Connection and find Twitter This will launch a pop-up window, so be sure that your browser allows for this. Sign into Twitter and your Connection will be ready to use! Build a Tracking Table or Spreadsheet For this FLO to work, we need to build a table to capture some information OUTSIDE of Twitter. Calling APIs on a regular basis would demand a lot of Twitter, so it s good form to bring this either into Azuqua OR use a database/spreadsheet to store details. Create a Google Sheet. The Google Sheets version will be best for most accounts. Azuqua Tables will be best for Team accounts as you ll have a larger number of rows you can work with. So let s start by creating a table with the following columns: Date Added Username Name Description Location Followers Every time we FOLLOW someone, we re going to update this table. This way we can also avoid adding people more than once.

Creating the Initial FLO (and test your connection to Twitter!) Let s start to create your FLO by doing the following: Click the New FLO button at the top of the Azuqua interface.

5 Creating the Initial FLO (and test your connection to Twitter!) Let s start to create your FLO by doing the following: Click the New FLO button at the top of the Azuqua interface. Select the Twitter connection you just created from My Connected Apps Click the Monitor Keywords event. Set your Search Criteria: Enter the hashtags into the Search box in the Options section of your Monitor Keywords card. NOTE: If you re wanting to use MULTIPLE keywords - separate them by OR Next, add the Get User Profile card. Drag the username over. Save the FLO (give it a name like Twitter Follow - <YOUR NAME> Click the Test FLO button NOTE: This may take a bit to work as this only looks over recent tweets. May take a couple clicks to work

6 So if it works - great! This shows us that we can read from Twitter and get back information.

7 Best Practices Before we get too far down the rabbit-hole, let s caveat this with one really important Best Practice As with ANY automation, you should be: considerate to your vendors AND Intentional with your goals If you build a FLO I STRONGLY recommend that you make sure of the following: Limit your Follows Sounds nuts, but when I created my first FLO and left it on overnight I came back to over 1500 New FOLLOWS. Wow. That s aggressive following which could get you suspended. Clearly, if I d left this running in perpetuity it could look awfully spammy on many counts. SO I m going to build this flow with a governor or rate limit feature. Other Things We also should put in-place a few things to make sure we have a good FLO 1. Use our Table to avoid following people multiple times 2. Make sure that people we re following have followers (like >200) 3. Also make sure that the people we re following are active (perhaps within the last month) Throughout this and at the end, I ll cover other Best Practices so stay tuned!

8 Building the FLO Google Sheets Version NOTE: We recommend using Google Sheets for many people as it will allow you to scale on any Azuqua plan. You may use other applications (like Excel Online, a Database, etc.). This process requires two FLOs (but could be reduced to one if needed). 1 - Build a One Row (+Header) Azuqua Table Again, we want to build in some assurances that we won t make too many API calls. For this, let s create a very simple Azuqua Table with only one row that will contain the number of followers. From Azuqua s Designer, do the following: Click Home Select Tables Click +New Table Next, click the New Column field - Give it a name like Following.

Your table should look like this: Every time we FOLLOW someone, we re going to update this table. This way we can also avoid adding people more than once.

9 Your table should look like this: Every time we FOLLOW someone, we re going to update this table. This way we can also avoid adding people more than once. 2 - Update the Table with Daily Follower Count Create a FLO that serves to update this table periodically. Why? We don t want to make a ton of API calls to Google (may see an error if we do) so we periodically get a count. Not extremely accurate, but it ll help govern our FLO. This FLO uses a Google Sheets HTTP Request and feed it a string queries the Google Sheets API. This is a little more complicated, but we ll document this accordingly. This card returns an Object which requires us to break down via two List At cards. Inspecting the JSON objects shows we need to get to the values part of the object - a couple levels down. It is within this object that we get to the LENGTH. We add this to the single-row table and we re done. Click +New FLO Select Azuqua Apps >> Schedule

10 Set your schedule to run on a regular cadence (10-15 minutes). This will depend on how often you run your Primary FLO Add a Now and Date to String Card Set the format to YYYY-MM-DD Set the time zone to your preference (e.g. PST would be US/Pacific) Add a String - Concatenate card This card will allow us to construct an API call to GSheets By clicking the Click or drop here to create field, add four (4) new fields. Name these fields /values (Make sure you have the / because this will help build the string Range start : (just a colon) Range end Set Values String1 = /v4/spreadsheets/ String2 will come from your Google Sheet URL: Open your Google Sheet that you created and you will find this in the URL (see below where it says REALLY-LONG-STRING : REALLY-LONG-STRING /edit#gi d=0 Copy this value into the String2 field /values = /values:batchget?majordimension=columns&ranges=

Range start = A : = : Range end = A NOTE: This will grab all of Column A in your sheet Add a Google Sheets HTTP Request Card Make sure you ve added a connection to Google Sheets Select the Google

11 Range start = A : = : Range end = A NOTE: This will grab all of Column A in your sheet Add a Google Sheets HTTP Request Card Make sure you ve added a connection to Google Sheets Select the Google Sheets connection (should do so automatically) Options: Select Request Type = GET Click Done to accept Drag the output of the Concatenate card into the Relative URL field Under Body: Type valueranges NOTE: This will be part of the object containing dates

12 Add a List At card Drag valueranges into the list field Under item type values Set this field s type to List by selecting the checkbox

13 Add a 2nd List At card Drag values from the previous card into the List field

Add a List - Length card From the Filter By card, drag the list field (at the

14 Add a List - Filter By card Drag item from the previous card into the List Field IMPORTANT: This card will then hold and compare the date to today s date Add a List - Length card From the Filter By card, drag the list field (at the bottom) to the list in the Length field IMPORTANT: This card will return our count

15 Add a Tables - Update Row card Select your Table and click Done Open your table and look at the first column labeled RowId (auto). Copy this field and place it into your card: The card should look as follows: When run, this will retrieve the count of any person you ve followed today and update the Azuqua Table with that number. This will allow for easy retrieval!

16 3 - The Primary FLO Let s break down the main FLO that does all the work 3a - Add a Control - Assign card First, let s add a card that allows us to tweak our FLO easily without having to hunt around for parameters. We ll add two fields - follows per day and follower minimum. Click the + symbol and select Function. Click Control And then select Assign Add two fields: Name one follows per day - set to Number Name the other follower minimum - set to Number Note: To create a new field, just click the click or drop here to create area in the card. Additionally: To change the field type (and name!) select the drop down by the field type / click Customize to change the name.

3b - Add a Now Card and Date to String card We want to cap our follows at a certain threshold every day, so we ll need this so we can make sure we re not over the limit (we ll be

17 3b - Add a Now Card and Date to String card We want to cap our follows at a certain threshold every day, so we ll need this so we can make sure we re not over the limit (we ll be looking at our table for that). As we did before, let s add these cards BEFORE the Get User Profile Card. Set your Date to String card to a reasonable format: YYYY-MM-DD Then set your time zone

18 3c - Check your Daily Follows Next, add a Tables - Read Row card Select the table you created Make sure to copy in the Row ID (it s the ONLY row in this table) This step helps us RATE LIMIT our FLO.

Again, this may not be completely precise. If you re after precision, consider including this check in your primary FLO. 3d - Check your Follower Count Let s add a new Function card - the Continue If.

19 Again, this may not be completely precise. If you re after precision, consider including this check in your primary FLO. 3d - Check your Follower Count Let s add a new Function card - the Continue If. Drag in the Follower Count field to the left-operand Set the operator to less than or equal Set your right-operand to foll I m going to check that this person has >= 200 followers. What this does is helps filter out spammy accounts or people that may not be (yet) influencers

20 . 3e - Get the User Profile We already added this card, but let s look at it to make sure we have what we need. You can remove fields you don t care about (like List Membership). Otherwise we don t have anything else to do with this card...

3f - Search your Spreadsheet Let s add a new ACTION - Google Sheets - Search Column What we want to do is first check to see if the Twitter Account to follow has already been

21 3f - Search your Spreadsheet Let s add a new ACTION - Google Sheets - Search Column What we want to do is first check to see if the Twitter Account to follow has already been added. Select your Spreadsheet (mine is Daves Twitter Friends ) Select your worksheet Then select Username (or whatever you ve named it) Click Done Then set your Search Term as username

22 IF there s NO MATCH, we will continue otherwise we stop. Use a Continue If where Row Number is empty (in other words, this search doesn t return a match!).

23 3g - Wrap it Up! And finally, we simply Follow the User and add this record to the Google Sheet that tracks all the followers.

24 3h - Final Notes Make sure you go back to the Monitor Keywords card and set the schedule. At the time of this writing, I have my Monitor Keywords schedule set at every 15 minutes. I only run this between 9 am and 5 pm on Weekdays. Play with settings for the best outcomes for your own needs.

25 Azuqua Tables Version So for those of you who have access to Azuqua Tables (e.g. a Team account) and want to leverage them instead of Google Sheets, we can replicate this function here Some differences, but it should look pretty much the same. Details are below. 1 - Add a Now Card and Date to String card We want to cap our follows at a certain threshold every day, so we ll need this so we can make sure we re not over the limit (we ll be looking at our table for that). Add these cards BEFORE the Get User Profile Card. Set your Date to String card to a reasonable format: YYYY-MM-DD Then set your time zone 2 - Check your Daily Follows Before this FLO continues, let s RATE LIMIT our FLO. Again - best practice is to make sure you don t follow too many people. Here I ll do a Search Rows against my Azuqua Table looking for the Date Added = Today. All I want to know is the Row Count from this subset of records - TODAY S records. If it s less than a certain number (like 50 or so) we re good. 3 - Get the User Profile

26 We already added this card, but let s look at it to make sure we have what we need. You can remove fields you don t care about (like List Membership). Otherwise we don t have anything else to do with this card First Check - Follower Count Let s add a new Function card - the Continue If. Here, let s drag in the Follower Count field I m going to check that this person has >= 200 followers. What this does is helps filter out spammy accounts or people that may not be (yet) influencers. 5 - Search your Spreadsheet Let s add a new ACTION - Google Sheets - Search Column What we want to do is first check to see if the Twitter Account to follow has already been added. Select your Spreadsheet (mine is Daves Twitter Friends ) Select your worksheet Then select Username (or whatever you ve named it) Click Done Then set your Search Term as username IF there s NO MATCH, we continue otherwise we stop. Use a Continue If where Row Number is empty (in other words, this search doesn t return a match!). I recommend testing to see what happens everything ok? Great! Let s keep rolling. 6 - Wrap it Up! And finally, we simply Follow the User and add this record to the Azuqua Table that tracks all the followers.

27 Enhancement This workbook does not cover the following topics, but as you iterate and improve upon this process there are a number of things we d recommend: 1. Use Date Added field to provide for an "unfollow" function 2. Halt FLO entirely if follow/followers ratio is too low 3. Add "Last Active" to further refine 4. Geolocation 5. Language 6. General Cleanup FLO 1 - Unfollow This would require us to do a bit more work. First, we d need a second table to show who FOLLOWS US. If someone doesn t follow us back within - say - TWO WEEKS, we can then unfollow them. Straightforward, but would be another FLO that I d run perhaps every few days to a week 2 - Preserve Following/Followers Ratio This is more or less impossible in a growth period. You d clearly going to start off Negative. Still, what you could do is periodically check a percentage that you don t want to go beneath and HALT the FLO if this is hit. People will start following you back so this can resume automatically. 3, 4, 5 - Add Last Active Date, Language, and Location These will also help you refine your target and should be easy to implement. 6 - General Cleanup I would also recommend adding in ORGANIC follows that you aren t tracking and FOLLOW THEM BACK if they meet your criteria. You could also do this manually as people come in.

28 Finally, you should periodically groom your list. It shouldn t be an insult if - in the course of tuning - you realize that you had some noise. Summary and Thanks REMEMBER - Using APIs is something that you should do with respect to limits and respect to a platform s rules. A big part of automation is also being aware of rules and using Digital Automation tools like Azuqua responsibly. In other words, someone should be monitoring, caring for, and making sure things don t get out of control. I ll also share that within 10 days - even just testing - my number of FOLLOWERS more than doubled. Pretty cool if you ask me. There are way more things you can do with our platform, so make sure you listen to our podcast, review our training material, and above all, set out to make some FLOs! If you need more help in building processes in Azuqua, check out the following resources: Azuqua Training Azuqua Community Contact Us Form Thanks for reading and get out there and make some Connections!

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