How to Get Someone's Tweets Before Anyone Else Does
"I wish I saw this tweet earlier".
How many times did you say this to yourself after scrolling Twitter and finding something juicy?
Sure, missing on tweets is a minor issue most of the time.
However, getting notified when someone tweets can be life-changing for investors, marketers, reporters, and other professionals who cash in on fresh information.
This is what automated Twitter notifications allow for.
Let’s illustrate with an example.
Imagine that you are a reporter covering the whereabouts of the US president. How useful would it be to get notified the exact moment the Commander-in-chief tweets?
Since most politicians tweet (including presidents and ex-presidents) the answer is “very”.
Moreover, hundreds of news break out on Twitter every day, which makes the platform a prime source of stories.
The importance of getting the information first is key, and not just for journalists searching for scoops.
Whether you are interested in political figures, market-bending entrepreneurs, or your favorite artists, getting their tweets before anyone else does is the ultimate head-start.
There are two ways to achieve this:
Using a native Twitter feature
Create an Make integration that will notify you via email or message the moment an account tweets
These may sound similar, but aren’t. In this article, we will show you the differences between the two, and how to automate Twitter notifications.
If you were looking to learn how to search someone's tweets, you are in for a much better treat.
Ready to get started with Twitter automation? Let’s go!
1. The native solution: Getting Twitter to notify you of new tweets
This is the easiest way to get notified whenever someone tweets.
To activate it, all you have to do is press the bell-shaped button on a profile you are following.
After that, you will start getting notifications when that account tweets.
While easy, this solution is not hassle-free.
First, it can be hard to keep up, particularly if you are active on Twitter.
Why? Simple: These notifications will appear among the multiple notifications you already get from Twitter (for likes, replies, follows, and so on).
This means that you will need to be extra aware of Twitter notifications at all times. Otherwise, the important notifications can end up buried among the trivial ones.
Second, there is the issue of volume.
If you activate the notifications feature for accounts that tweet a lot, you will end up with tons of notifications. It is also safe to assume that most of these will lack any value or relevance.
In such occasions, the remedy can be worse than the disease. Since there is no native feature to filter tweets, you will find yourself dealing with too many useless notifications.
Third, the notifications feature will work if you are using Twitter’s mobile app.
In the web versions of the platform, Twitter fails to send notifications when the bell-shaped button is on.
This said, it’s a feature, and you can try it out.
That’s better than nothing, right?
2. Automated Twitter notifications, powered by Make
Creating a notification system for new tweets is easy with Make.
Most importantly, it won’t present you with the problems mentioned above, as it allows to:
Get custom notifications for different accounts (i.e. not all the notifications will look the same)
Choose where you receive the notifications (email inbox, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more)
Filter the tweets you want to get notified for (by keywords, hashtags, topics, and more)
Now, we’ll show you how to set it up.
Note: Twitter is the only premium app on Make. You will need a paid Make account to use it. If you don’t have one yet, please register.
Step 1: Creating the Make scenario
Now that you have an Make account, let’s implement this automation.
From your dashboard, begin by creating a new scenario from scratch:
After you do this, please select the app that will trigger your scenario: the Twitter app.
Then, click the “Continue” button on the upper right side of the screen.
This will take you to the scenario builder (aka visual canvas) which is where you will create this automated Twitter tracker.
In the visual canvas, you will see that the Twitter app has been pre-loaded as your first option.
Click it, and select the “Watch tweets” module from the list of modules.
Now, it’s time to configure the “Watch tweets” Twitter module.
Step 2: Configuring the Twitter module
The “Watch tweets” Twitter module is the backbone of the scenario. To set it up, you will have to:
Connect your Twitter account to Make
Set the “I want to watch” field to “Someone else’s tweets”
Insert the handle name of the account you want to watch (without the “at” sign)
Click on the “Return full text of tweets” option
Set the limit of tweets that you want the automation to return in each cycle (the more the account tweets, the higher the limit should be)
For this example, we will be watching Elon Musk’s tweets. See below:
After you do this, click “OK”.
Now, it’s time to set up where you will receive the notifications. For simplicity, we are choosing Gmail.
Step 3: Configuring the Gmail module
This module will send the new tweets from a watched account to an email inbox (yours, or someone else’s; that’s for you to decide).
First, you will have to add the “Send an email” Gmail module (or the email module in case you are not a Gmail user) to the scenario.
Click on the plus sign next to the Twitter module, and search for the Gmail app in the list of options.
After that, it’s time to configure the module. You will have to:
Click “Add” to connect your Gmail account to Make
Type the recipient’s email address in the corresponding field (can be your own email address)
Write a custom subject line
Select the contents that the email notification will feature
In the content section, we are choosing three basic operators: Tweet ID, text of the tweet, and URL of the tweet.
After that, click “OK”.
This will work a little magic for us. Each time Elon Musk tweets, we will get an email with the ID of the tweet, the contents, and the URL to check it out.
Getting this information in your inbox will allow you to get a glimpse of every tweet right after it’s published.
But for that to happen, we need to tune the scenario a bit more.
Step 4: Configuring a filter (optional)
Some accounts tweet a lot. This can be troublesome down the road, as not every tweet is gold.
Or perhaps you are interested in a specific topic, and just want to get notified whenever someone tweets about it.
Following up on our example, let’s suppose that we want to get notified only when Elon Musk tweets about dogecoin and bitcoin.
To do this, we will set up a filter.
The filter will only notify us when Elon’s tweets contain either of these words. This way, we will avoid getting notified each time Mr. Musk tweets about anything.
To configure the filter, you will have to:
Click on the little wrench sign that stands between the Twitter and email modules
Add the “Text” operator in the field below “Condition” (so Make scans the text of tweets before filtering)
Set the condition to “Contains (case insensitive)”
Add the word that tweets must contain in order to trigger a notification (in our case, those words are “dogecoin” and “bitcoin”)
See the image below for reference:
Bear in mind, you can add as many words as you want in your filter. In our example we could also add words like “btc”, “crypto”, or “to the moon” to cover more ground.
There’s only one step missing, and we’ll be all set. Let’s go!
Step 5: Schedule the scenario
This is the most important step of our automation. It will determine how often Make will check on a Twitter account for new tweets.
The fastest an Make scenario can run is at a 1-minute frequency.
In our case, this means that Make will be watching Elon Musk’s tweets every 60 seconds.
Whenever there’s a match (i.e. a new Elon tweet containing either “bitcoin” or “dogecoin”), Make will let us know over email, instantly.
To schedule the scenario, please click on the little clock attached to the Twitter module.
After that, all you have to do is:
Select the option “At regular intervals” (the scenario will run once a minute, 24/7)
Establish the frequency (1 minute)
And that’s it!
Don’t forget to turn the scenario on, save it, and leave it running.
Now, each time Elon Musk tweets about dogecoin or bitcoin, you will be among the first people in the world to know about it.
Final thoughts: Uses of automated Twitter notifications
The possibilities that this simple automation offers are enormous. Professionals from different fields can implement it, and line themselves up for an interesting competitive advantage.
Here are some examples of it:
For investors: It can help investors to get ahead of the market. For example, after Elon Musk and Mark Cuban tweeted about Dogecoin, the price of the cryptocurrency soared
For journalists and reporters: No matter the field of journalism you are part of, a scoop is a scoop. On countless occasions, these break up on Twitter before anywhere else
For content curators: If you need fresh mentions for any given topic, you can follow thought leaders and get notified whenever they tweet about it
Once you get used to Make, you will also be able to experiment further.
From harvesting more data from tweets to sending notifications into a Slack channel, feel free to play around with Make - you won’t break anything!
To conclude, don’t forget: If you want to get notifications from multiple accounts, just clone the scenario, fill in the details, and you’ll be good to go.
Fun little experiments and great opportunities await.
Happy automating!
