iMacro in action with APIs

Hello there, I know it’s been a long time since I am posting something new out here. Anyways, I am here and let’s start with something cool.

Today, I am going to open a whole new domain of possibilities where you can actually use your iMacro code for doing cool this; things that cool developer dudes (nerds) do often and charge a huge amount of money for that. ,, wait,, what’s coming ahead? Is it like some computer language tutorial or some cheap selling campaign? Well, not exactly, today’s section focuses upon utilization of iMacro scripting (simple scripting) for doing complicated activities without understanding or actually going through lengthy processes .

I am sure you must have heard of API, it’s a common term these days; it’s a fancy name given to a technique used for data/information transformation from one website to another. Let’s say you want to talk to your twitter account from your website, what will you do for it? Twitter allows standalone interface where you can login, see and send tweets and much more but what if you want to add this functionality in to your website so that whenever there is a news update from your company, it should get updated at your twitter account. Now, this is the place where API comes in to action; twitter, just like thousands of other website allows this functionality using its public API where you get free access to their API by registering and blah blah blah, oh crap, there are a bunch of tutorials out there, go and Google it yourself. As I said earlier and as you already know from my previous posts that I only share solutions that a common men can do (of course basic understandings of iMacro is must :P) so lets see how it is done.

There is a website called ‘www.apigee.com’, it’s a platform where you can actually access thousands of APIs of different websites including all of your favorite social media platforms. Today, we are going to see how easy it is to send periodic tweets using iMacro combined with apigee functionality; you will have to register a free account first and once you login, you will land at their home page with list of API’s that they have in their inventory, you can add more however let’s just stick with already listed ones. Now go through the lists and click ‘twitter’:

 An API allows interaction with the parent website and each API has different functions, as in our case, it allows getting data like tweet counts, friend lists, changing data from timeline, re-tweeting, posting a new tweet and many more functions, you must be seeing all these details if you’ve been following me.

Since you’ve got basic idea, let’s go for the real part where you actually link an API. There is a menu called ‘Console’ at the top, click it and click Authentication select box and select ‘OAuth 1’, it will show a popup, asking you to login your twitter account and allow it’s access to API, just hit ok/yes/authorize button (you know). Here I have allowed access to mine:

Now click “Select an API method” and select ‘Update.json’:

Now type the actual tweet text and click “Send” button:

And that’s it, go check your twitter account, you have actually posted a tweet using Twitter API :P

Keep in mind that twitter has limit of 160 characters, you can’t post a long tweet.

There are thousands of other APIs, some are listed at apigee and rest are more like personal however you can still utilize them using apigee if you have access to them. Here is the code for sending bulk tweets using iMacro:

VERSION BUILD=8920312 RECORDER=FX
'
'    Instructions:
'    Create a file in datasource folder, named Tweetsfile.csv; first row contains header and there is only 1 column
'
CmdLine !DataSource Tweetsfile.CSV
Set !DataSource_Columns 1
Set !Loop 2
Set !DataSource_Line {{!Loop}}

TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:TEXT FORM=ID:request_params ATTR=ID:apigee_console_0_status CONTENT={{!Col1}}
TAG POS=1 TYPE=BUTTON FORM=ID:console_request ATTR=ID:send_button
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=ID:control_request_params
Wait Seconds=3

And more scheduling auto-tweets, checkout my previous post about scheduling iMacro scripts!

Lengthy but effective mode for earning extra dollars using iMacro

Adf.ly, time consuming yet one of the free sources of earning some extra dollars through internet; it’s easy to setup and payment receiving is easy as well. Likewise TinyUrl.com, Adf.ly offers a mode of earning – as soon people start visiting your shortened links, a small amount of money gets added with each visit.

There are multiple ways though which you can speed up visiting process, however you need to be careful that none of those actives lie within boundaries of spamming. You could use those links in different but relevant forums, put them in your twitter profile, facebook pages or other social media platforms are attractive sources. Personally I have been trying to encourage thousands of people using my twitter accounts, the shortened link is posted at main profile and tweets point out real users, which indirectly increases traffic at my profile and eventually some of them actually visit the linked posted in profile section.

Adf.ly’s links look more like spamming at first glance & using those links at most of the place doesn’t attract visitors, & using those links in email campaigns may violate adf.ly’s terms and may end up with termination of your account or what so ever; lastly you can’t use TinyURL or any other URL shortening platform for re-shorten these links.

Anyhow, point here is to find out some easy yet effective modes which really pay off. I have earned more than 100$ using lots of tricks however for showing you guys how it works, I have created two twitter accounts, scheduled tweets till next two months and now I am busy with other tasks :) and will check my adf.ly account in few months – smart hah! If two of my twitter account along with little efforts can get me few thousand clicks then consider how much it can generate with more than ten twitter accounts for you?

If you are unaware of how to make tweets and how HootSuite is used for scheduling tweets; checkout Hootsuite and Twitter categories first.

Tweet Scheduling with iMacro using HootSuite

Once again, I have come up with a not-so-unique however semi-automated tweeting solution, which is going to save you a lots of months’ efforts and of course staff’s salary. Likewise my previous posts, this is another iMacro based tutorial & scrip, which will help you in scheduling your tweets.

A friend of mine actually hired three staff for social media and two of them were doing tweets & scheduling them manually for weeks – unfortunately, all of their effort went useless as tiny amount of traffic arrived from those activities which took months. This doesn’t happen with everyone however as majority of twitter users complain this kind of behavior & eventually some of them actually stop working aggressively at twitter. I don’t blame them for stopping activities however there is always some kind of strategic fault which ruin everything.

Here is what I suggested to my friend & how it helped him getting heavy relevant traffic from Twitter.

Twitter as I posted in my early posts that, is one of the misunderstood forms of social media marketing, for majority, its’ just a tweet which you post however for rest with strategies, it’s one of the fine mediums of driving relevant traffic; personally, I get around 500+ daily traffic just from twitter – amazing however it took lots of time and efforts initially and by passage of time, I’ve included tens of twitter account for this purpose but on initial level, you can get around constant 50+ daily quick visitors within initial two weeks. Before going for the solution, I would like you to follow guidelines thoroughly as each point is important & can help in increasing general traffic towards your website/blog:

1. Maintain account properly; make sure to have valid website links, pictures, name & background image with your website URL
2. For bulk activity, your account should be at least one week old, older accounts are perfect for bulk activities so make as many as possible accounts today so that you can use them later
3. Do some regular activities and add few followers using like4like or twiends.com in first week

Ok here is the deal, above were just check points of a good looking twitter account; once you are done with above, focus on structure of actual tweets. Following are the main points which I personally follow & you will probably hear from others as well:

1. Its’ good to have lots of followers in your twitter account however it’s useless in most cases. Until and unless are you are celebrity, people won’t follow you, even if you make them follow you, they won’t read your tweets – wastage of time, so don’t go with the strategy to increase followers, you can add thousands of followers in few days just by using websites like like4like.com, twiends.com & tons of other underground websites (Google them yourself). The main point here is to add IDs of real people and make them feel that they are important; these people are aren’t just real, they are taken from twitter IDs of brands, your competitors & other places which you consider contains genuine followers. Like in my friend’s case, he has a local classified website for Dubai market; I had to find his competitors’ twitter IDs, local trading organizations’ IDs & so forth. Once main sources were identified, I acquire all of their followers using iMacro scripts & arrange them in series of two IDs like ‘@jbgrab @alicewilsons’. Consider if you get an email from twitter saying that someone has MENTIONED you in his tweets! Wouldn’t that be a surprise for you and wouldn’t you once read or click the tweet once? This is the main point over here; to contact highly relevant people by their names so that traffic could be generated – got it.
2. Ok so first point was to acquire relevant IDs and to use their IDs in your tweets – it will for sure generate result however as each tweet contains two IDs which make only two people to visit your page, what about the general public and the followers? Well, story doesn’t end here; second most import part of making a tweet is to add a HASH TAG. What is hash tag? Except the fancy name, these are just ‘Search terms or keywords’ which you include in your tweets and once they are indexed by twitter, you will be listed every time when someone searches those terms. Where from they come? Well, if you are selling something then these will come from product name like #mobile #jobs (try to search more hash tags from main twitter searching tab). This will allow general public, your followers & of course recipients (who’s IDs are included) to see your tweets easily.
3. Above points were about hash tags & IDs; this points is all about adding website links & tracking your efforts. Since above points take lots of initial efforts there need to some kind of KPI to measure your efforts – isn’t it. Most of the website owners and webmasters use Google tools for tracking daily traffic and Google Analytics (my favorite tool) comes at the top; it offers highly detailed traffic monitoring tools with features to add filters, perform auto-analysis, track campaigns & lots of other cool stuff. So how do twitter activity is tracked with Google Analytics? Google allows different mediums for tracking traffic directly however it includes adding filters and other tracking stuff that most of us don’t know; for keeping it simple; I use ‘Google link builder’ for decoding my links into Google tracking structure & them convert them using TinyURL.com just to make those links smaller (Google ‘Google link builder’ for additional info about it). With Google link builder, you give some precise tracking terms that Google itself use in Google Analytics; in my case, I tell Google that source of the visit is Twitter, medium was Tweet, term was Mobile & it was a text message – rich amount of information is delivered with each link which you can access under ‘Traffic Sources > Source > Campaigns’ from analytic tool. It helps you in making future strategies by providing precise results of individual campaigns.
4. This is the final point of the series, where I’ll brief you about ‘Structure of Tweet’. Structure of tweet matters a lot, for suppose if you tweet like this ‘@jbgrab get discounted watches at tinyurl.com/xx_some_link #watch’ – will you click the link, well probability is high. This is just one sample/template; you can make customized templates as per product categories – just make sure that all above points are part of your tweet.

So finally you get to know how strategy works! Well, this is the complete strategy that I made myself and been using it from some time and luckily its working great for me and my friends. The only problem with this strategy is that it used a lot of concentration, efforts, time & resources. Well it was little different from my end as I use iMacro based auto-scripts for performing most of the tasks myself including extracting thousands of twitter IDs & scheduling tweets.

Having strategy at hand is the basic thing for a webmaster however implementing phase is another story; based on different factors including appropriate time, data source (IDs), region, competition & other resources, implementation is performed and for all strategies at twitter, you have to be aggressive & bulky. I mean, you can’t get enough traffic even if you are using best available strategy with just a single account; you need to have multiple accounts operating at same time – don’t go like a gold smith, struck harder.

While working with multiple accounts and scheduling, HootSuite.com is my favorite tool of trade. As being free member at Hootsuite.com, it allows adding up-to 10 twitter accounts at same time and unlimited scheduling (I think so, I tried 2k scheduled tweets & it worked). Be careful using scheduling tools as too many tweets in an hour can block your twitter account, twitter allows only 100 hourly API tweets (API means using different websites like other than twitter itself), personally, I set tweet for every ten minutes, three to four tweets an hour for 24 hours (24*3=72 tweets daily). 72 tweets a day, means around 2,160 scheduled tweets a month for a single account – big deal, but how is it possible to set such huge numbers of tweets and what about having 10 accounts in parallel?

Again, iMacro comes handy in conditions like these. Once setting everything in excel sheet (hard part), an iMacro script schedule every tweet for me, usually I set around tweets of 30 days in future in single account, making 10 twitter accounts sending auto-tweets for next 30 days (2,160*10 = 21,600 schedule tweets). Scripts are available individually costing from 30$ to 50$ and if you want me to handle your tweets for a login time, come talk with me – I done this activity for small scale websites to big websites including classifieds and B2B websites like TradeBanq.com.

Your comments, suggestions and inquiries are most welcome here.

Unusual traffic generation from Twitter using iMacro

Twitter, one of the odd social networks that always kept me annoyed about its functionality & benefits. Since my first account at Twitter, I never understood efficiency and outcomes of twitter as I do at the moment.

Anyhow, for those who are new to twitter and perhaps stuck in understanding effective utilization of twitter, this article is going to help a lot. Before going further, I am assuming that you are aware of iMacro, excel, twitter and twuffer.com; for those who don’t know about twuffer.com, it’s a website which allows you to schedule your twitter tweets in future dates, just like hootsuite.com!

Nothing is for free, I mean, it’s cost is zero however it takes a lot of time & efforts in order to get something out of twitter, you need to give it value and time otherwise you will end up like most of the twitter users. First thing first, it’s a good tool for famous personalities or actors like Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Justin Bieber, Sharukh khan, Micheal Jackson or others, they get thousands of followers generically without doing anything – people are crazy following their favorite personality’s tweets. Whereas people do follow companies, businesses or other forms of professional stuff, however their followings are way lower and less productive and mostly companies fail to earn anything from their followers.

What is the use of having 10k followers if you aren’t generating any kind of revenue or some other benefit, let’s say how many sign-up are you having from your twitter followers? Or do you receive quality traffic/visit daily from your twitter account or have you ever made any sale from your twitter followings? Most probably you would hear ‘no, nah, not yet, perhaps in future blah blah blah…’. This same happened with me as well, however now I have tricks on my own, from which I am going to explain one right now – it helped me achieve 1,300 average constant daily traffic from almost 4 months and I already had 1200 signups at my website and 13 sales. Figures could change for your website; however it’s my proven method, beneficial for me so I thought to help other as well. So here it is:

Step ONE: Find your competitors twitter account with lots of followers and followings; your competitors are having those followers just because of their different campaigns & they might have invested a lot of money and time so it’s a good idea to utilize their efforts rather than going for completely new approach. Once you have identified, try to scrap/extract their followers using iMacro or any other tool that helps & add as many as possible IDs from all competitors accounts. Once done, remove duplicates and filter them for all kinds of errors. (50k or more ids would work fine)

Step TWO: create 50 or more twitter accounts using different email ids – yes, you guessed it; you have to make emails as well!

Step THREE: login individual twitter id and visit twuffer.com and let it access your account by authorizing process.

Step FOUR: Create an excel sheet of tweets. You can encourage others to visit your page by placing their names/ids in your tweets, therefore if you make tweets like this ‘@id1 @id2 checkout page_url #fun’, it would generate good amount of visits/clicks. Your tweets must serve three basic things – IDs of others, #HASH tag & your desired LINK. IDs encourage others & HASH help you in twitter search results; little working in excel could do magic, you can easily make attractive & unique tweets with dynamic variables/cell in minutes.
Step FIVE: Ok this is the final one. Once you have acquired relevant ids, created accounts & prepared tweets, now is the time to set scheduling details in excel sheet, insert your desired day, month, year besides the tweets and using any automated tools (like iMacro), schedule all tweets at once.

Personally, I have set three months tweets in my 45 twitter accounts. Each account will automatically post 50 tweets daily on different times, making it 4.5k tweets from individual account and 202.5k from all 45 accounts in just three months. (Daily 50 tweets * 30 days * 3 months)

It may look different at first glance, however if you read it carefully and complete it once, you will find it easy, time saving effort & result generating technique. You can make your own iMacro bots for acquiring ease at different step or contact us back for already prepared solutions or direct assistance.

Comments if you find it useful or need further assistance!

Driving constant traffic from Twitter with iMacro

Twitter, one of the misunderstood social network and my favorite. I have been doing a lot of tweets and by now, got around 6k followers & 27k tweets – cool! It’s good to tweet daily, hourly and weekly, however again, its time taking and consumes a lot of man hours to reach the daily limited of 1k tweets.

I have been using it aggressively with my auto-bots, however recently I came across a new website allowing scheduling of tweets in future times – its called twuffer.com, check it out if you like to. It will allow you to set thousands of future tweets from your account. Here is how I manage to get constant traffic using twitter & twuffer with iMacro step by step:

-          Create account(s) at Twitter.com with multiple emails (20+ will work fine)

-          Create account(s) at Twuffer.com & authorize them to use your twitter accounts

-          Create master excel sheet with tweets & time

-          Login individual Twuffer.com account and schedule tweets for upcoming 2 to 3 months

While practical, I set around 30 twitter & twuffer accounts and scheduled around 30,000 future tweets for three months and in result, getting around 200 (average) visits from twitter on daily basis – not bed for free solution I guess so. Make sure to add @use_ids in all of your tweets, I scrapped followers of big companies and used them in my tweets; your followers will see your tweets & all included people will also check their mentioned tweets and make them come to your website.

If you want to acquire Twuffer.com bot or simple auto-twitter.bot then let me know.