Through the Social Desert on an App With No Name

For most of the last few weeks, this song has been stuck in my head. I guess it will stay there until we figure out a name for this beast.

We're getting there. 

I'm taking a break from coding because I realized that I need more people using this App to continue.

Yes, this means you.

You see, I'm trying to automate cooperative tweeting between friends.

Why not? We already do that for people who manage multiple accounts.

Technically, it's a simple thing. It's the logistics that are bugging me.

We need more tweets to get a good sampling to share. That's what cooperation is all about. Multiple retweets of the same stuff over and over is not a good idea.

Right now, we're a bare handful of active testers. It was important to stick to a small core group in the initial stages. Now that the App is stable and most of the kinks ironed out, we can open the doors wider.

Who can benefit from a better Twitter presence

Anyone who has a blog, offers a product or service, deals with B2B or B2B or P2P, can benefit. 

If you write you MUST be active on Twitter. No, really, "must" is not too strong a word. If anything, it doesn't go far enough.

If your preference is more along the lines of content curation, it's just as important. It may even be more important.

You can combine a tweet schedule with hash tag rotation and IFTTT scripts to cross-post on LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Pinterest, Tumblr, and anything else that IFTTT supports. 

On IFTTT, Twitter has a trigger called "New tweet by you with hashtag." That's the trigger that makes cross-posting possible. For example, when I tweet with #in a recipe sees it and posts an update to LinkedIn.

We'll get to IFTTT sharing recipes some other time. They really aren't very complicated and they make your life a whole lot easier.

Joining the Tribe

Joining is not as simple as just signing up. Sorry. You aren't simply signing up at all. You're creating your own Twitter Application using our scripts and hosted on our servers.  

We handle all the heavy lifting, but you need to do your part.

Let's start with the easiest part

Just go to www.PaulTheGhost.com/Scheduler/JoinUs.php and fill out the form. So far, that's nothing new. NOTE: That link works for now, August 17, 2016. Later, the App will move to its permanent digs. I plan to redirect, but I may forget. 

You need Developers Credentials from Twitter. 

Sure, there are other scheduling apps that don't require you to register with Twitter as a developer. They also limit what you can do. Twitter has the deepest and best API in the business. It's second only to Goggle's suite of APIs.

Why on Earth would anyone want to be limited? It's easy enough to have access to the full pop.

Once you submit the registration form, the system will send you an email. That email includes instructions and a link to the Twitter Developers site. It's a six-step process that takes five to ten minutes to complete.

The email also includes a PDF version of the instructions.

Once you complete the process, your profile page will open up. You will see your Twitter picture, your exact follower/following counts, and how many lists you've been added to. That means your Twitter App is properly configured and working fine. If you don't see that,  contact me here, on LinkedIn, or via email. 

Ok, so you have an account now what?

Let's take a look around and make sure we're doing OK.

Check that the time zone is right. We schedule your tweets based on your time. You may not find your exact time zone. Pick one that is the same as yours. There are about 275 distinct time zone names in PHP. I figured that was about 240 too many.

You can pick your primary Tribe by clicking on "Change Tribe." Your primary tribe will be used in supportive retweeting by other members. A Tribe is like an overall category. The tribe on your profile is like your default tribe. You can also set the Tribe for individual tweets if they don't fit your primary tribe. 

You can also create and edit your Clan from your profile page. Just like in Life, a Clan transcends a Tribe. Think of your Clan as your "friends." These are the people you want to support more often.

There's a list of downloadable documents down at the bottom of your profile page. There's also the option to submit documents for addition to the list.

If you manage multiple accounts you can link them to your profile as well. When you log-in to one account, you can manage all accounts linked to it. To link an account, you first need to create it on the system just like you did with your primary account. 

An account can only act on accounts linked to it. You can have different levels of linkage on different accounts.

Click on "My Dashboard". This is where you will do most of your magic. 

You'll see some basic info and links to your Tweets scheduled for today, and for this week. Obviously, you won't have anything there yet.

Notice that the system built your "Follow me on Twitter" link. You can use that on emails, your web site, blog posts, wherever you want. It uses Twitter's follow-me web intent.

At the bottom, there's also a list of your campaigns. Campaigns are just a way to organize your tweets into groups. Again, there will be nothing there yet.

Let's change that right now.

We work from stored Tweets.  

People want to reuse Tweets. They want to reschedule them. They want to create different versions for different purposes. They want to come back to a tweet later and do it all again. 

Why not?

Storing the tweets' details  lets us do all that. It also makes cooperative tweeting possible.

From your dashboard, click "Add a Tweet for Scheduling."

You now have three options:

• You can start from a new tweet.
• You can start from a Twitter Card.
• You can start from a Twitter Share.

Let's start with the simplest.

Starting from a Twitter Share.

It's not as effective as a full tweet, but it is a lot easier.

Clicking a "Share to Twitter" button opens up a window. Just copy the stuff in the text box. That's the stuff highlighted in the image here. You don't need the URL in the address box up top.

Hop over to the "Start from a Twitter Share" page and paste into the text box there. Don't bother editing yet, just paste it in and click continue. You'll get a chance to edit it soon.

Now, it should look like this. Well, it will after you edit it a little.

I like to mention whose post I'm sharing. I keep the mention of beBee, but I remove the "via" next to it. The word "via" on Twitter usually refers to the writer. 

PotAYto, PotAHto, whatever floats your boat if fine by me.

The number in orange is the length of your text. Keep that low. Since a Share is a type of Twitter Card, you can go up to 115 characters. Remember that you will need to add hashtags later on. Leave room for them. The limits here include eventual hashtags.

Notice the list of campaigns in blue. That list is the campaign names I've used. Campaigns are a way of categorizing your tweets. You won't have any yet, so just type one in.

Once you're happy with it, click "Write Share Tweet to DB"

A new screen will pop open.

Click "Schedule Tweets" to start scheduling right away. We'll get to how to do that another time. For now, just click "Return to Dashboard."

Starting from a Twitter Card

We won't talk much about Twitter Cards. Cards are mostly used by advertisers. Suffice it to say that the procedure is the same as for a share. After all, a Share to Twitter is just a specific form of Twitter Card.

If you use Twitter Cards, you know what they are. You just need to paste your link and schedule away.

Starting From a Full Tweet

This is probably the most effective method. It should be used by all creators of content. 

Step 1: Tweet the tweet. Tweet with an image. Tweeting without an image is an exercise in futility. A good Tip is to tweet with the  longest hashtag you may decide to use. That will save trouble later.

Step 2: You need the embed code. If you just tweeted, the tweet will still be on screen. If not, it will be on your Twitter profile page. It will look something like this.

Well, it will look like that after you click the three little dots (first arrow). 

From the drop-down, select "Embed tweet" That's the second arrow.

A new window will pop open with the embed code already highlighted for you.

That code contains all the information in the tweet. From that code, we can build tweets to schedule.

Copy it (Ctrl+C on PC, Cmd+C on Mac)

On the Web App, select "Use Embed Code from Manual Full Tweet"

You will end up here.

Paste the code into the text box. The system will extract the information it needs from the embed code.

Add a campaign, adjust the text if you like, and you're good to go.

Scheduling Tweets

This post is already waaaay too long. I think I bit off more than I can chew. 

Rather than run through the scheduling process and its 8 methods, let me show you the dashboard section where you will start most of your scheduling.

This is the section of my dashboard where all my beBee Campaign tweets are hanging out. I can see how many tweets I scheduled for each saved tweet, how many tweeted, and how many are left to tweet.

The retweet section isn't activated yet. Once it is you will see how many people have scheduled RTs on your post.

The icons on the right let me do stuff. 

In order, they are View Tweet Status, View Scheduled Retweets, Schedule Tweets, Build Click-to-Tweet Links, Edit/Clone Stored Tweet, Delete Scheduled Tweets, and Delete Stored Tweet.

Their purposes are pretty much what you'd expect. Only the build Click-to-Tweet links option needs explanation

A stored tweet holds everything we need to build Click-toTweet with image links. Clicking that option lets you build links that will cause people to tweet your post. For example, if you click this link, you will send out a tweet on your account that says, "I get plenty of Kaboom! How to get the Kaboom From Your Content," along with a link to my last post.

You can build Click-to-Tweet links and pepper them all over your posts. Try to stick to only a few.

I'll go into greater detail about scheduling on the next post. For now, just remember this. Hashtag rotation is a very important part of Tweet scheduling and cross-posting to other platforms. Do not skip this step!

Until next time

For those of you who aren't familiar with the song, "A Horse With No Name" here it is