Irrespective of what you feel about Elon musk and his takeover, Twitter remains a big beast and a significant marketing force for businesses. If there is breaking news, then for many, the first port of call is often Twitter, as real-time accounts of what is taking place appear every second.
Twitter’s role makes it a valuable platform for marketers because it provides ‘eyeballs’ that are engaged. However, with the potential to make money or influence the news, rogue actors, false accounts, and fake news also come. Twitter has had to implement some of the most sophisticated protections of any online platform to keep these in check.
The protections, though, hurt genuine marketing activities. There are solutions though; and as we shall see, employing a proxy for Twitter is one of the most effective.
Why is Twitter’s Platform Important for Marketers?
The effectiveness of Twitter as a marketing platform far outweighs the size of its user base. Its significance stems from the level of engagement on the platform and the demographics of its user base. Data shows that the key 25-34 age bracket constituted 40 % of its users, of all the people making over $75k a year in the US, a third are active on the platform.
As a marketer or business looking to target this demographic, it is, therefore, essential that you are part of the Twitter conversation. The problem is that this is also an opportunity for Twitter to make money through their advertising platform, so hindering account creation and large-scale posting to get reach is within their interests.
Manipulating Twitter
The issue that Twitter has with fake accounts, has long been understood. Bot-driven, and often used to spread fake news with large-scale posting, they have caused damage to the platform.
Account automation is, though, also a legitimate tactic used by marketers. It allows them to spread, in a fast and efficient manner, their marketing messages and boost brand awareness.
Abuse and self-interest have prompted Twitter to establish protective measures against bot activity. This encompasses control of automatic account management and automated posting, unfortunately hindering fair use.
How the Protections Work
Protections are based on user activity. An algorithm is in place to seek out and remove accounts that do not conform to expected usage and another that monitors IP activity related to usage, banning IP addresses that they deem are spamming the system.
To scale your message, you are therefore going to require a lot of accounts and be able to present your use as ‘expected activity’. Fortunately, there are ways that allow you to bypass the protections; some are approved by Twitter, others, most definitely not.
Ways Around the Protections
In order to subvert the protections put into place, there are two main approaches. The first would be to use the official channels such as the Twitter API or their advertising platform. Both are there, in theory, to help businesses utilize Twitter more effectively.
The second approach is to go outside of Twitter’s official channels and instead, utilize third-party tools. At the center of any of these tools will be the use of proxies. This is because, correctly employed, the judicious use of proxies makes account management and multiple account processing becomes a breeze.
Twitter AIPs
Twitter’s API is one of the methods that you can utilize to get around the protection protocols. The API is a series of endpoints that can be called in programmatic sequences to tweet, create spaces and send direct messages. Good for marketing, you would think, despite the limitations and control the API imposes.
Unfortunately, beyond the inbuilt programmatic restrictions there is a huge caveat, the API cannot be used for business purposes. Protecting its advertising platform and money-generating abilities is the true driver of this policy. Sadly, unless you operate a ‘not for profit’ business, this hamstrings marketers and forces them to look at the second option, proxies.
Proxies and Twitter
Proxies are a tool that can be used to mask the originating IP address of a website interaction. It does this by altering the IP address of the request that hits the website’s, in this case Twitter’s server.
The mask is applied by sending the traffic to a third-party server, known as a proxy server. As the traffic passes through this server, the IP address is altered to a clean, safe address that will almost certainly be approved by Twitter. When Twitter returns the traffic, this goes back via the proxy server before being sent on to you. The process is so fast that it is usually imperceptible.
How Proxies Can Help Twitter Management
Proxies are one of the most important tools a marketer can possess. They help by hiding the real IP address of the traffic; its true purpose can be obfuscated. Instead of seeing and recognizing a business IP address, it seeds a residential IP and, assuming it doesn’t perform outside of expected parameters, allows it to use the platform to create accounts, post tweets and send messages.
Scale now becomes the only real issue. Having found a way to bypass Twitter’s protections you need to be able to scale up the processes to take advantage of the opportunity.
Using Proxies That Work Best with Twitter
Proxies come in different classifications and types. There are Datacenter proxies, residential proxies, and mobile proxes as well as systems that serve them as static proxies and rotating proxies. Each has its uses and purpose.
With Twitter, it is crucial to present the face of what is expected for normal account usage. Using the wrong classification of proxy can cause failure and account bans or terminations, which can set back your marketing message distribution and curtail reach. It is, therefore, essential to have the right setup from the outset.
Setting Up a System
Setting up your proxy system so that it works from the outset and continues to work in the future should be paramount in your planning.
As Twitter wants to see what it expects from normal account activity, using Datacenter proxies will reduce your chances of success.
Instead, you should be looking to deploy residential and or mobile proxies using reliable suppliers, such as proxyempire.io service, in your Twitter account management and posting processes. Residential and mobile proxies give access to the same IP address that households use, making them the perfect decoy.
Scale and Rotation
To achieve any form of scale with your account creation and posting process you are going to need a considerable number of proxies to make it work. Without a huge budget, static proxies are not a good option, as they will limit your capacity.
The better option is rotating proxies. These are pools of thousands of proxies that rotate with your usage. They work in a similar way to static proxies, except that rather than being given a list ofIPs to use, you are given one or two that allow pool access.
When your traffic hits the pool your IP has a pool address applied. This address will then be changed out after a given timeframe, often just a few minutes, ensuring that Twitter servers only see fresh IP addresses hitting them when tasks are carried out.
Conclusion
Twitter remains an incredibly important platform for marketers. With demographics skewing toward managerial and professional occupations and high engagement rates, it can be one of the best ways to reach some of the most affluent target audiences.
Combined with Twitter’s position as a go-to news source, the protections that need to be implemented are sophisticated. These protections, though, have heavily impacted marketers or users looking to get their messages across.
Proxies are proven to be the most effective method of circumventing Twitter’s restrictions and allow you to manage your accounts and posting schedules to suit your needs.
