5 ways to automate Twitter

Twitter might be known for questionable takes, but it’s also a valuable business tool. Want to track how people feel about your business? Need an extra channel for customer support and feedback? It’s just a Twitter search away. 

However, it’s easy to get distracted on Twitter. It’s another platform to monitor, and perhaps you’re susceptible to the endless scrolling. (It happens to the best of us.) And if your team relies on you to share the Twitter intel for business purposes, you can’t afford to get sidetracked.  

Zapier can help you automate Twitter to focus on more impactful work. With our automatic workflows—we call them Zaps—you can connect Twitter to your favorite apps to track brand mentions, cross-post to other platforms, and more. 

Skip ahead:

Get notifications about Tweets

We know app notifications can be a mixed bag. They’re often too much, not relevant enough, or require you to go into the app itself to get more details. But alerts are usually the only option if you need to track your brand’s mentions, Tweets from competitors, or the latest from industry leaders.

Here are a few ways Zapier can help you create smarter, more relevant Twitter notifications:

Monitor mentions

If you want a constant feed of alerts for your brand mentions, you can set up a Zap to send notifications for Tweets that match a particular search to the apps you use most. Just be sure to use the appropriate search operators when you set up your Twitter step to get the desired results. 

Try the Zaps below to get started. 

Stay on top of lists

When I was a journalist, I breathed Twitter Lists. Twitter lists make it easy to aggregate different accounts in one place, so it’s more organized than your general feed. I used them to keep up with various state and local news, government agencies, and other accounts relevant to my job. You could easily do the same for competitors, industry leaders, or other accounts you like to follow. 

You can automate notifications for new Tweets in specific lists. Once you’ve created a Twitter list with accounts, give these Zaps a try:

Keep track of mentions

Those real-time notifications can help you see what people are talking about at the moment but aren’t great for tracking sentiment over time. 

Instead, you can create a Zap that will automatically add Tweets to your spreadsheet app of choice. You can then review your spreadsheet and identify any trends.

These Zaps below can help you get started:

Post on Twitter from other social channels

If you’re a social media manager, you know that posting unique content across social platforms takes time. You have to tweak the message for different audiences (and character counts). And unfortunately, you don’t have much control over how posts look when you use built-in social media integrations. 

Luckily, you can customize Zaps to ensure your posts look a certain way for LinkedIn, Instagram, or whatever other apps you use. 

If you’re sharing Twitter content to other platforms, start with these Zaps: 

If you want to tweet content from your other social platforms, try these automated workflows. 

Share content to Twitter

Tweets are just another form of content. If you’re running a business, your Tweets should be purposeful. But who wants to agonize over the perfect Tweet? Here are a few ways you can share content on Twitter. 

Promote blog content on Twitter

If your business creates content of any kind, you need an easy way to share it. Many content management systems (CMS) have built-in integrations for sharing content to social media, but they’re not always automatic. 

With Zapier, you can automatically share content to Twitter from WordPress, Ghost, or an RSS feed. Get started with these Zaps:

If you want to adjust the timing of your Tweets, you can use a Delay step—available on our paid plans—to tweet at an appropriate time.

Draft Tweets in advance

Social media managers are pros at batching content, which is creating content in advance and scheduling it out. It’s a great productivity tool, but it’s also landed some brands in trouble. For example, when a scheduled Tweet that was harmless at the time is in poor taste after a current event. 

You can’t predict world events, but you can write Tweets in advance, sit on them, and tweak them as you go. The easiest way to do it is in a spreadsheet. (It’s also your best edit Tweet tool.)

Even easier? Setting up a Zap to connect a spreadsheet app to Twitter. These Zaps will automatically create a Tweet from updated spreadsheet rows. You can choose what triggers the Tweet, such as a checkbox. 

Tweet user-generated content

Depending on your social media strategy, you might share user-generated content. It can be a useful tool to help your business build trust and connect with existing customers.

If you want to take it a step above a retweet, you can use Zapier to publish user-generated content. (As long as you get permission to share first.)

These Zaps can help you get started with user-generated content, whether you’re collecting it from a form, a shared email inbox, or using the Zapier Chrome Extension. 

Connect other apps to Twitter

What if you want to connect an app that doesn’t have a Zapier integration? If your app of choice has webhook capabilities, you can use Webhooks in a Zap to connect your app to Twitter.

Automation for a more productive Twitter experience

With some automation help, you can use Twitter to your advantage to track brand sentiment, promote your business, and stay on top of social media insights. 

These are just a few ideas to save time with Twitter. Zapier supports thousands of apps, so you automate almost any task at work. Start building your Zap now and see what you can create.