A step-by-step guide on how to waste your time spamming Twitter.

Using twitter as a link dump for backlinks really isn't a very disruptive use of the system. You dont need any followers, so you don't have to worry about mass-following a whole bunch of people and annoying them by inflating their follower-count or clogging their email with notifications. I really don't see any problem with doing this because it doesn't annoy anyone.


But alot of you are trying to leverage Twitter to get traffic to your sites. You mass follow a whole bunch of people in hopes that they will follow you back and then will see and click on your spam links. You've created a Twitter name like: weightloss or wuyitea or herbalremedy, or some other product/keyword. Then you're scraping some tweets from rss or from related websites, or usually news feeds. You're tweeting out maybe 4 messages a day, all at the same time, and every message has a link back to your site, or your squidoo lens.

I've got news for you guys: You're all doing it wrong.


Before we go any futher, I want to mention that I'm not truly convinced that there is any substantial value in spamming Twitter to get traffic to your sites. There are many twitter users who get great traffic to their sites from their tweets, but that is because they have real personalities that people want to follow. It's impossible to fake a personality, unless you're Hillary Clinton (oh SNAP!). I think there are better things you could spend your time doing which guarantee better results. That said, I just couldn't help chiming in with some advice for you all, because if you are really intent on annoying the living hell out of people with your Twitter spam, I'd like you to least justify it by doing it effectively and getting the best traffic you can out of it.


So, were I to waste my time spamming Twitter, here's how I would do it:


1) Pick a good name. Don't pick a product or a keyword, that just sets alarm bells ringing. And remember: You don't need to mass create Twitter accounts. You need to create a handful of really solid natural looking accounts. You're going for longevity here, not hit and run.


2) Upload an avatar.


3) Set your profile webpage link to a real page you own, maybe a blog, but NOT a squidoo lens or affiliate site. This is important. I'll come back to it later


4) Prepare your script not to just pull and tweet news headlines. In addition to your regular content sources (headlines, rss feeds etc) try scraping tweets off the public twitter timeline and retweeting some of those. This will go a long way in making your account look natural. Speaking of looking natural, don't tweet at regular intervals. I see most spam accounts tweet 3-5 times a day all at once at the same time every day. Try tweeting ~10 times a day at different times. Also, don't put links in every tweet. Maybe tweet two links a day to your money sites, and try to vary the sites you are promoting. There are sites that track your spam account based on the frequency at which you post the same link (http://www.twitspam.com/).


5) Now that you've got your script ready, you are ready to start following a bunch of people in hopes that they'll follow you back. The trick here is to appear completely natural. The more natural you appear, the better your chances are of being followed in return. Dont follow 10,000 people at once, but rather, for your first batch, follow ~200 people. After a day or so, unfollow those ~200 people and grab the number of new followers your account has. Lets say of those ~200 people, 122 followed you back (that's pretty optimistic). You will then follow 122 NEW people, and wait another day for them to follow you back. Maybe now you'll have 183 followers. Unfollow the 122 people you followed the day before, and follow 183 NEW people. Rinse and repeat.

This way, your account will always have a somewhat balanced following/followers count. Having an unbalanced following/followers count is a sure sign of a spam account.


6) Remember step 3 where you set your profile webpage to a blog? You can assume that at least some of the people you follow will check out your twitter page and then click through to see your webpage. Armed with this knowledge, you can get them to follow you back without them even realizing it. You do this with a little CSRF. On your page, call out this url: http://twitter.com/friendships/create/youraccountnumber. Since they just came from your Twitter profile, you know they are logged in to Twitter. By calling out that url, you tell the Twitter system to make their account follow you. You have to set this up in such a way that you scrub out the referrer on the request, so a simple 1px iframe won't cut it. I'll leave that part to you guys to figure out.


So there you have it. Have fun wasting your time spamming Twitter. If you need me, I'll be busy hunting bigger game.