How to build a smart Zombie Twitter Account
Last month we covered how to create a Zombie Blog that pissed off a whole lot of people, and this month we’ll cover how to setup an Automated Zombie Twitter Account. However, unlike the Zombie Blog, this Twitter Account actually has some real value to it’s followers. In essence this tutorial will show you how to “combine” a ton of different blogs in to a single Twitter account. Unlike the Zombie blog, this Zombie will send traffic to the original blog posts, thus giving the authors more traffic. Need proof that this works? Check out @locosocial and @use_this – both of which are powered by this technique.
Step 1. Pick your Niche
Pick a topic! I would suggest finding a niche that has a decent amount of products or services available – this way you can offer upsells and every-once-in-a-while promote a product or two to generate a little revenue.
Step 2. Create your Twitter Account [optional]
If you don’t have a Twitter account around your given niche, then setup a new one. Make sure you include a Profile Photo and Profile Bio. If you don’t have an Image to use for your avatar, head over to http://findicons.com and locate an image that works with your niche.
Step 3. Find Blogs to Tweet About.
Use Google and search for “Top [insert niche] blogs”, the results will almost always be one or two blog posts listing out the top blogs for your given market. Visit these blogs and copy their RSS feed’s URL, in to a Text File.
Step 4. Build a Unified RSS feed from all the different blogs.
You’re going to use Yahoo Pipes to combine all of the blog posts in to a single RSS feed. We’ll then feed that RSS feed to Twitter via TwitterFeed.
I have already created a Yahoo Pipe that will do all of the heavy lifting for you: 8iFY Blog Curator to get started.
Clone the pipe by clicking “clone”.
Once you’ve cloned the pipe, click Edit Source. You’ll now be presented with the various elements that make the pipe work. You’ll only need to worry about the “Fetch Feed” block; inside this block, start pasting the RSS feeds you collected in Step 3.
Once you’ve added all of the RSS feeds, click “Save” in the upper right hand corner.
Once the pipe is saved, you’ll need to click “Run Pipe“.
Running the pipe will show all of the blogs combined together. Next we need to get the single RSS feed of this combination. To do this, right-click on “Get as RSS“, and select “Copy Link Address“.
Step 5. Use TwitterFeed to automatically post to Twitter.
Make sure you already have a TwitterFeed account. Once you’re logged in to TwitterFeed click “Create New Feed“.
In step 1 you’ll need to provide the URL of the Pipes RSS feed in to the input box labeled “Blog URL or RSS Feed URL“.
In order to setup some advanced options you’ll need to expand the “Advanced Settings” section.
In the Advanced Settings section, set the Update Frequency to “Every 30 mins” and select the number of posts you’d like to Tweet each time. For the purpose of the Zombie Twitter, I would suggest only posting 1 or 2 Tweets at a time, anything more will get annoying.
Click “Continue to Step 2“.
Select Twitter as the Service you’d like to post to. Authenticate your Twitter account, and BOOM, your done. Now every 30 minutes, Twitterfeed with post 5 new Tweets containing the latests blog posts from the list we collected earlier.
Step 5. Grow your Twitter Followers.
Now that you have a Twitter account being populated with great content, its time to start following folks. Use one of the following methods:
- Manually follow individuals using the “Who to follow” link on Twitter.
- Use my free TwitMaster Google Chrome Extension & Firefox Extension (works only on the old interface).
- Use TweetAdder to do it all automatically.
What other methods have you seen to create an automated Twitter account?
Related Posts:
Tagged: blog, Globally unique identifier, Google, Pipes, RSS, Twitter, TwitterFeed, Uniform Resource Locator, USMLE Step 1, Yahoo Pipes
Brandon Corbin said on Feb 1, 2011
Once you get some followers for your account, you should then signup for SponsoredTweets at SponsoredTweets.com. You can get paid for #sponsored tweets.