Twitter marketing for business is serious stuff. If you don’t believe us, try snatching a keyboard from a social media networking expert and see what happens. Just try it.

At The Content Factory, we tweet so much that we hashtag things in our sleep, and we find it difficult to unplug from the world of Twitter marketing, especially because we know how important a quick response can be. When Ricki Lake replies to you, you do NOT leave Ricki Lake hanging.

But as much as we love social media networking, we also enjoy time away from the office. So when we heard about a new way to balance our Twitter marketing with our analog lives, we were pretty pumped, and of course we had to share the love. We’re talking, of course, about automating our Twitter responses. Here’s how to make it work:

How to Set Up a Twitter Auto-Responder

1.    Create a Twitter App

  • Sign into dev.twitter.com with your Twitter account. Create a new app, add a website and a callback URL (http://www.google.com/script) and then write a description.
  • Click the settings tab and select Read and Write for the Application Type. To save your work, click Update.
  • Then head over to the OAuth tool tab and write down the Consumer Secret and Consumer Key.

2.    Create an Auto-Responder Script

  • Go to script.google.com.  Select File -> Make a copy to copy and paste the auto-responder script in Google Drive.
  • Choose the beginning and ending days for when you’ll be away. Also enter the Twitter app keys and your Twitter handle.
  • Next, click on Run -> Start to initialize the auto-responder. If asked to authorize access to Google Script services, click on Yes.
  • Select Run -> Start again, which will prompt an “Authorization Required” box. Give authorization for the script to connect to your Twitter account, and your Twitter auto-responder is now complete.

Not so hard, is it? We don’t just use Twitter for a business, we use Twitter for a lot of different clients, so we’ll be sharing this awesome tip with them too.

Update

Thanks for all of your feedback on this post! For those of you just checking out this Twitter hack now, we wanted to let you know that there have been some changes to the Twitter API which may affect the auto-responder code. Some of you who've tried this hack recently have told us it's no longer working correctly. We're hitting up some of our coder friends for solutions (feel free to comment here if you have any insights!) In the meantime, here are a couple of free auto-responder tools you may want to try instead:

Relaxed. If you're having trouble sorting out the code in our guide, Relaxed will do the heavy lifting for you. Just connect the app to your Twitter account, set the date when you'll be away and choose the message you'd like to send to anyone who tweets you during that time. Simple and easy!

Crowdfire. Use Crowdfire to send a “welcome DM” to new followers. You'll find this feature under the “Automate” tab, but we recommend checking out Crowdfire's other features too. It's a great tool for finding new followers and cleaning up your following list by unfollowing inactive accounts.

We're always on the lookout for new social media trends and tools. Have an app you think we should try? Want to share your own genius Twitter hack? Let us know by posting a comment!

Header Image by Freepik

By Guest Contributor

social media networking, Twitter Auto Responder, twitter for a business, Twitter Hacks, Twitter marketing

  1. Hi looking at this thanks, it was the most helpful to date! Just a bit boggled about the first bullet on part 2.  

    Go to script.google.com.  Select File -> Make a copy to copy and paste the auto-responder script in Google Drive.

    The 'make a copy' option under file isn't highlighted.  

    Any suggestions? 

    many thanks 

  2. Dumbest advice EVER. Don't listen to this garbage. Be yourself, don't overly automate yourself on Twitter. Unless you want people to know you could care less about interacting with them.

    1. For the record, we do not automate any of our social media at The Content Factory. This was just a cool trick we learned that we wanted to share. By no means, are we suggesting that people should leave everything on autopilot. However, this trick may be useful as part of a comprehensive, interaction-based social media strategy. 

    2. I whole heartedly agree with Andrew, you need to be interacting with your audiance. I hate auto replies and un follow them.

       

      1. True but as a younger person in the business it gets incredibly hard to keep up with everyone who follows you on social media. I'm not agreeing with leaving everything on auto-response but maybe just to help keep everyone informed on events occurring. I'm the only person who does it at my workplace so this is increibly useful to me as I don't have anyone else helping keep track.

        1. Glad you found the Twitter auto responder info useful! We don’t recommend using an auto-responder all the time, but if you’re going on vacation or will be out of the office for a few days it’s something worth considering. 

      2. I agree with both sides but if you are a big company and have a high rate of follower to messaging each individual would be impossible, so the automated system is perfect in this situation.

  3. Was trying to set up an auto DM for new followers.. do you know of a script for that?

  4. This is actually really handy for my personal account when I'll be trekking for charity in the middle of no where with no reception but still want to direct people who tweet me while I'm away to the account that is raising money for charity. How can I test if it's actually working though? 

  5. I just use autodirectmessage, because it only messages the person once instead of multiple times (like if they unfollow you and then re-follow you). Plus it tells me how many messages it sent. 

  6. I recently started using a pretty handy tool to help me get exposure through Twitter. The tool is called http://www.twitterfav.com and it is completely free. I recommend you use it to help you gain exposure and followers in Twitter.

    1. Thanks for your comment, Steve! I hadn’t heard of TwitterFav before – we’ll be sure to check it out. How does it differ from Hootsuite? It looks like it has a lot of the same functionality.

      1. Hi Kari,

        TwitterFav is not inventing anything new, there are many services like it, however its simplicity and very good responsive website is what attracted me the most. I can use any of my devices, I have an iPAD and it looks and works perfectly, my iPhone the same way and my desktop the same experience. I love their dashboard and how you can automate different aspects of the system and the other benefit is the instant feedback and support from their TwitterFav Twitter account rep and their email support. 

        I started my account with 10 followers and now I am close to 200 in a matter of days. They also have limits imposed to make sure twitter guidelines are followed and you account is never treated as spam. 

        Anyways that's all I have to say for now about the service. Oh and is free during their BETA testing which I guess it ends in a month from now.

        thanks

        Steve

  7. Love the article and advice! Gave me some new ideas how to manage my twitter account. It's just too time consuming to be polite and respond to every tweet and follows…

  8. I really don’t know about twitter marketing hacks. Thanks for sharing such amazing tips on a Twitter autoresponder. It is true that nowadays people are more active on Twitter than any other social media platforms.

Comments are closed.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}