Why?
Right now, it is getting really hard to keep track of people and I feel I need a way to escape my loaded folder of bookmarks, and dump my constant open tabs of different people on Steemit.
I know the team is working away, and following people will be a breeze here soon, but right now I think it'd be beneficial to propose a stop-gap solution that could open up both following capabilities and notifications of everyone's Steemit posts via Twitter.
A few days ago I decided that one way I could maybe help support Steemit would be to make a Twitter bot that frequently updates with recent site-wide blog posts to help spread Steemit on Twitter.
**Setting up a Twitter bot is free, quick, and easy, especially thanks to the Streemian.com RSS feed. But, before we go any further I should remind people that I am not an expert at this and there may be far better ways to do this whole process than what I am doing here, so please comment below with your thoughts!**
How?
Here's how I did it:
Create a new Twitter account, name it anything you want. We'll go back later.
Find a service that posts RSS feeds for free on twitter. There are a bunch to choose from, do your research and pick the one that you feel the most comfortable with. Twibble.io and Twitterdeck.com are among some of the ones I came across.
Go to the Streemian.com RSS feed. Look at the options. You can make an RSS feed for any user by adding your user name to: http://www.streemian.com/rss/@username. Check the page and it will be a bunch of seemingly jumbled nonsense. That's good. If you go back to Streemian.com you can see you can add an additional RSS feed for your replies.
Go back to the RSS Tweet service that you signed up for. Enter your personal Streemian RSS link with your inserted user name in the field that requests the RSS feed. Connect it to your twitter account. Adjust your post frequency settings and attach any hashtags you want.
After setting up, send a test push to your twitter. Go to your twitter to confirm. Done!
Why Not Set-Up a Bot to Publish Your Own Following List?
This was my original thought. Make a bot that could push all of the content that I want to follow through one Twitter account and show people how to do it. This seemed like a good idea, until I got capped out on how many RSS feeds I can have before paying. This theoretically could get worked around, but it just seems like a lot of work.
Why Not Make a Separate Web Page or Blog with the RSS Feeds?
This, again, seemed impractical and inefficient for people to do on their own, but someone will likely blow my mind tonight or tomorrow with a way better idea. That's how Steemit works, afterall!
Why Not Just Share?
My anticipation is that many people will forget to share their content on other platforms and miss out on gaining early traction on potentially good content. Their would-be Steemit followers may also miss out on their posts if they don't have an easy means to stay in the loop.
In addition, some people have private Twitter accounts or may prefer to keep their personal Twitter account separate from their Steemit one. This method gives those users a means to create inter connectivity between the two platforms without disrupting either core experience.
What Next?
Well, theoretically we could each set up a free Streemit Twitter bot that we could all follow so we could stay up with each others' posts. We'd easily be able to have notifications on our phones through the Twitter App and much more.
The ultimate goal is to siphon people away from platforms like Twitter and onto Steemit. We start showing a strong inter-platform community alongside the site's functioning system, we can start leading others by example.
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think about Twitter bots that push Steemit and help people connect!
www.twitter.com/derekreith - My Main Twitter
www.twitter.com/derekareith - My Steemit Blog Posts
www.twitter.com/steemitposts - Occasional Recent Site-wide Steemit Blog Posts