Lecture Notes: Building a Twitter Bot for Marketing

Introduction

• Speaker dislikes marketing but recognizes its necessity for business growth.
• Created Twitter bots 9 days ago; gained 700 followers and increased revenue by 56%.
• Overview of the presentation:
  • Idea generation for marketing tools.
  • Functionality of the Twitter bot.
  • Launch strategy and promotion methods.
  • Connection to a real software business and revenue generation.

Indie Page Overview

• Indie Page: a link-in-bio tool for showcasing portfolios.
• Target audience: entrepreneurs and individuals trying to make money online.
• Users can connect Stripe accounts to showcase revenue.
• Current stats: 10,000+ registered users; revenue between $1,000 - $4,000/month.

Marketing Without Marketing

• Aim: Develop small tools or features that promote the main application.
• Example: Leaderboard feature launched months ago that ranks entrepreneurs by revenue, resulting in a revenue spike.
• Continual search for small features that can potentially go viral.
• Inspired by seeing other entrepreneurs share their revenue on Twitter.

Twitter Bot Functionality

• The Indie Page Revenue Bot:
  • Tweets whenever a user receives a payment and tags the startup's maker.
  • Sends weekly and monthly leaderboards of revenue statistics.
  • Tweets pinning feature for leaderboard updates.
• Additional webpage to track the bot's tweet history.

Technical Implementation

• Tech stack used:
  • Next.js API routes for bot functionality.
  • Versal for scheduling jobs.
  • MongoDB for storing payments and tweets.
  • Tailwind CSS and Daisy UI for UI components.
• Process of Twitter API integration:
  • Created a new Twitter developer account (complications due to account linking).
  • Created library for Twitter API interactions.
  • Daily, weekly, and monthly tweet scheduling using Chrome jobs.
  • Daily process: Check Stripe data, tweet about recent payments, store tweet in database to avoid duplicates.
  • Monthly/weekly leaderboard process: Aggregates data, ranks startups, creates a tweet thread (handling character limits).

Marketing Strategy

• Speaker's advantage: Established audience of 100,000 on Twitter.
• Promotion method: Simple tweet gained 300 followers initially, currently gaining 10-20 daily.
• If starting from zero:
  • Verify Twitter account for credibility and trust.
  • Launch bot on various platforms (Hacker News, Reddit, Product Hunt).
  • Collaborate with power users for feedback and organic promotion.

Revenue Insights

• Overview of Stripe account revenue for the year.
• Notable revenue spike in May after leaderboard launch.
• Recent revenue growth observed; fewer zero revenue days indicate consistent traffic.
• Conclusion: Increased awareness and traffic through Twitter bot contributing to revenue growth.

Final Thoughts

• Emphasis on the importance of shipping products to discover their value.
• Encouragement to take action and test ideas.