Automate your Twitter presence with your own Twitterbot

Keeping up with social media and keeping your online community engaged can be a time consuming task. Through Bot Libre you can now automate your Twitter presence with your own Twitterbot. Any Bot Libre bot can be connected to a Twitter account. The bot will manage the Twitter account, checking status updates, managing followers, replying to mentions, retweeting important posts, tweeting your blog posts or RSS feed, and auto tweeting.

Bot Libre makes creating a twitterbot easy. Follow these 5 steps to create you own twitterbot, and start it tweeting for you today.

You can also watch this "how to" on Youtube here

Step 1 - Create a bot

First you need to create your own bot, this only takes a few clicks, see How to create your own chat bot in 10 clicks for instructions on how to do this.

Now you are ready to connect your bot to Twitter.

Step 2 - Create a Twitter account

You need to create a Twitter account for your bot. If you are automating your own account, then you can use your existing account. You can create your own Twitter account from the Twitter website here.

Step 3 - Authorize your Twitter account

From the Bot Libre website browse to your bot and click the Admin Console button.This will take you to the Admin section that provides several tabs of administrative functions. Click on the Twitter tab. From the Twitter tab click the Authorize button.

This will give you a link to Twitter. Click on the link, this will bring you to Twitter where you must accept the application authorization request, you will need to login to Twitter if you are not already logged in. Twitter will give you a code, you must go back to the Bot Libre page and enter the code, and click Done. This will return you to the Twitter properties page, next click on the Connect button.

Step 4 - Configure your Twitterbot

You can configure your bot's Twitter usage in several ways. Use caution when configuring your Twitter bot, do not use your bot for spam, or to violate the Twitter terms of service.

Tweet when someone chats with the bot

This property configures if the bot should tweet when someone chats with it on Bot Libre. It will tweet some like "Talking with anonymous on #botlibre".

Reply to mentions

A mention is when another Twitter user tweets to you, or about you using your Twitter ID, i.e. @brainchatbot. This configures your bot to reply to all tweets that mention it. The bot will reply the same way it replies to chat messages.

Reply to direct messages

A direct message is private message from another Twitter user. This configures your bot to reply to all direct messages. The bot will reply the same way it replies to chat messages.

Read friends status updates

Configures if your bot will process its friends tweets. The bot will only process its friend's tweets that include one of its 'Reply Keywords' sets. If the tweet does not include any of the keywords, it will be ignored. The bot will process the tweet like a chatroom message, it will only respond to the status update if it knows a good response, (requires a 90% match to respond). Scripted responses will also be used for tweets that are questions. The 'Read-only' option can be used to have the bot read all of its friends tweets, but not reply.

Max Status Updates

Configures the maximum number of friend tweets to process in one cycle.

Reply Keywords/Hashtags

The bot will only process its friend's tweets that include one of its 'Reply Keywords' sets. If left blank, the bot will not process any of its friend's tweets, unless the 'Read-only' option is used.

Tweet Search

Configures if the bot should search and process tweets that match a certain criteria. The bot will process, and possibly reply to the tweet, or retweet the tweet. Use this feature with extreme caution, and do not spam. Tweet search uses Twitter's search API which can include a list of keywords, and some other advanced syntax.

Retweet Keywords/Hashtags

Configures if the bot should retweet certain tweets from its friends, or its tweet search results. If the tweet contains any of the keyword sets, the bot will retweet it. Note, this use only keyword set, not Twitter's search syntax. Since the retweet keywords are apply on top of the search results, you only need to include the keywords, as the results have already been filtered.

Follow Messages

Follow Messages configures if your bot will listen to 'follow me', or 'unfollow me' requests. If the bot gets a direct message, or tweet mention that request a follow, or unfollow it will perform the request. The purpose of this is to allow the bot to provide some service to users that subscribe with it. Be careful in enabling this, it should not be used to allow Twitter users to increase their follow counts. The bot will only follow at most 100 users.

Welcome Message

You can set a welcome message to be sent as a direct message to anyone who follows your bot.

Max Friends

You can configure the maximum number of friends your bot will follow on its own. The maximum is 100 friends. You can still add more friends manually if you wish.

RSS Feed

Configures the bot to process an RSS feed, and post each new feed item to Twitter. An RSS feed is a standard XML format for news and posts. You can get an RSS feed link from your blog, or from many news and forum services. Make sure you give the full HTTP link to your RSS feed, this should be an XML file, not a webpage or HTML file.

RSS Keywords

You can filter the RSS feed results using keywords. To post the entire RSS feed, leave this blank.

Auto Tweet

You can configure your bot to tweet every set number of hours. The bot will tweet a random tweet from its 'Auto Tweets' list.

Auto Tweet Hours

The number of hours to wait between auto tweets. Note, if you bot only checks it status once per day, it will only auto tweet once per day, even if you put 1 hour here. To force your bot to auto tweet every time its checks its status, you can put -1 here.

Auto Tweets

You can enter a list of tweets here. Each tweet is separated by a new line. You can use formulas and AIML template to construct dynamic tweets.

Step 5 - Train your bot

You can train your bot how to answer tweets, mentions, and direct messages through several mechanisms.

You can chat with your bot, and correct any incorrect responses it gives.
You can add question answer pairs, or default responses from the Training & Chat Logs page in your bot's Admin Console.
You can review your bot's chat logs, or upload or import chat logs, response list, or AIML.
If you are a programmer, you can script your bot's responses in Self, or AIML from your bot's Scripts page.

That's it, now your bot is ready to start tweeting.

If you encountered any issues, or would like help setting up your bot please email us at [email protected] or upgrade to our Platinum service and we can build your bot for you.

There are already many Bot Libre bots on Twitter.
You can test things out by tweeting to, @brainchatbot.

how to i retweet my friend what should i write in retweet box or somewhere

Currently you must provide keywords to retweet, you cannot retweet all of a user's tweets.

The best way to retweet a user is to add a "Tweet Search" for their tweets.
The "Tweet Search" entry takes Twitter search queries, in addition to just keywords.
So to search all tweets for a user enter,

from:{user}

i.e.

from:brainchatbot

You can also add keywords, or filters (-{keyword} excludes that word),

chat bot -sex from:brainchatbot

Then in the "Retweet Keywords/Hashtags" enter common keyword sets that you want to retweet.

chat bot
virtual agent
artificial intelligence
ai

We will look into adding support for retweeting all of a users tweets.

Is there a way to configure this bot so it can auto-respond to all tweets from users I'm following, regardless of what they tweet?

The bots will only respond to mentions, and tweets that match one of their trained question patterns.

What do you want the bot to respond with?

help me please :-)

Token/api are ok

For retweet, don't work :-(

"Tweet search"

#tshirt -adult -sex
tshirt -shipping

Retweet keywords/hastags

tshirt
#madeinitaly
#business

Tks in advance

I checked your bot, and it is not connected to Twitter.
You need to go to your bot's Twitter page in its Admin Console and click on the "Connect" button. Do not click on Disconnect, as then your bot will not be connected.

To test your bot click on the "Check Status" button. You can its Log to check what it did and see any errors.

Not, on our main site, bots will only check their status once per day. You need to upgrade your account, or use our dedicated Twitter server to have your bot check its status more often.

http://www.botlibre.com/upgrade.jsp

http://twitter.botlibre.com

How do you make the bot tweet every minute?

If you enter -1 in your bot's autotweet hours field it will autotweet every cycle. How long the cycle is depends on your account, on our Twitter server Gold account cycle about every 10 minutes.

http://twitter.botlibre.com/upgrade.jsp

We do not currently have an option for every minute. Twitter has an API usage limit that resets every 10 minutes, so if you access the API for frequently than every 10 minutes you can exceed the usage limit, and every API call will fail.

Twitter also has a realtime API that we are investigating.

For some reason my bot won't autotweet, I need to click "Check Status" for it to tweet

On BotLibre.com Twitter bots for Basic accounts will only check their status once per day.

To have your bot check its status more often you need to upgrade your account, or use our dedicated Twitter bot server at http://twitter.botlibre.com

See, https://www.botlibre.com/forum-post?id=12902620

I want to retweet the hashtags #brony #mlp and #mlpseason6.

However when my bot retweet it, it also retweeted hashtags with it called #Clop (inappropriate material)

And much more inappropriate handbags. Is there a way to filter them so my bot won't retweet them?

Like a form of "excluding data" or "excluding keywords" I can use ?

To exclude keywords in your Tweet Search use "-keyword"

i.e.
#brony or #mlp -#Clop

You can use any syntax from Twitter's search API,

https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/search

OMG, I didn't think of that. Thank you!!! <333

Actually, another question.

The excluding text written as >> "#brony-#clop"

So the bot reweets the hashtag and not the excluding hashtag #clop ?

Or is it another way? Can you give me a specific example so I can template it?

The tweet search is passed directly to Twitter.

See, https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/search

To test it and see its rules.

The -#clop should exclude that keyword.

How would I setup my bot to auto reply to new tweets by Donald Trump..

Thanks

You can use a Tweet Search in your bot's Twitter properties to process and reply or retweet tweets.
The Tweet Search uses Twitter's search API which has many options such as from:user to filter tweets.

See,
https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/search

Replying to all tweets for an account may be considered spam will most likely result in having your bot suspended.

It is possible to reply to tweets that contain a set of keywords,

http://www.botlibre.com/forum-post?id=25560

You can also retweet tweets that contain a set of keywords,

http://www.botlibre.com/forum-post?id=13218

How about retweet with reply? I want my bot to search for tweets with a specific keyword and retweet with reply in it.

Your bot can reply to tweets using "Reply Keywords" if the bot knows a good response to the tweet.

To retweet with a comment, this is not something we support currently.

If you need any features added, we can always add these for your through a service contract with Bot Libre for Business, https://www.botlibre.biz

I have followed the instructions given here to set up a DM chatbot, but it doesn't work at all. The bot is linked to Twitter but it never reply back.

Thanks,

The Twitter bots for Basic accounts only poll their messages once per day.
You can upgrade or use http://twitter.botlibre.com for a shorter polling time.

See, https//www.botlibre.com/forum-post?id=12902620

You know the top right drop down box with the (Twitter) section? I used that and followed the instructions with the retweeting

However, I got a replying retweet bot with whatever someone says to it like copy cat. "Hi, how are?" "Hi, how are you?"

It's annoying and I'm wondering if I'm using the right part of bot libre correctly.

Do I use (Bot Libre Twitter) or just (bot libre ) itself?

If you do not want your bot to reply to messages, unclick "Reply to mentions" and "Reply to direct messages".

You can create a Twitter bot on either botlibre.com or twitter.botlibre.com or botlibre.biz

twitter.botlibre.com will reply the fastest unless you upgrade your account.

Hey, ahm I was wondering how do I make the bot autotweet every half an hour?

You can enter -1 in the hours to tweet every cycle.
You would also need to upgrade to a Platinum or Diamond account.

Hello, I've recently set up a bot to tweet out quote every hour or so, but it seems that even when I set the auto tweet hours to -1, the bot won't tweet unless I come in and check the status myself. What am I doing wrong?

The Twitter bots for Basic accounts only poll their messages once per day.
You can upgrade or use http://twitter.botlibre.com">twitter.botlibre.com for a shorter polling time.

See, https://www.botlibre.com/forum-post?id=12902620

My twitter won’t allow access to my bot. It says token has expired or something. What should I do?

DID YOU ENTER THE PIN IN TIME ?

What is the exact error message?

You can go to your bot's Twitter page in its Admin Console, and click "Disconnect" then click "Connect" to reset your token.
Or you can click "Authorize" to get a new token.

If you use an RSS Feed, does that mean the bot only posts when the RSS Feed updates?

What if you set Auto Tweet to run every hour? Does that only operate on the tweets you’ve listed at Auto Tweets? It doesn’t apply to the RSS Feed?

Yes, the bot will monitor the RSS feed (or feeds) and tweet any new RSS posts.
The bot will still perform autotweets, and other tweets as configured.

Autotweet hours only applies to autotweets, only these will be posted every hour. RSS post will occur whenever there is a new RSS post.

I'm wondering will a bot made for retweeting content based on keywords automatically search and retweet these things? If so how regularly? Or do I need to manually do this by using the check status key?

Yes, if you configure your bot with a Twitter account, and setup a "Tweet Search" and "Retweets" using keywords it will process this search and retweet based on those keywords.

How often the bot does this depends on your account, for Basic accounts bots only check their Twitter status once per day.
For Platinum accounts bots check about every 15 minutes.

See "Tweet Cycle",
https://www.botlibre.com/upgrade.jsp

Hello,
My tweeter Bot RT some tweets. It works fine.
Is there a way to make my twitter Bot like some tweets instead ?

Thanks

Currently only retweet it supported not like.
We will investigate this feature for our next release.

Admin, I upgraded to a business account and the auto cycles don’t update at all. I have to manually use “Check Status” on Twitter to get it to run and learn and tweet and reply. Any way to fix this?

Looking at the bot you have no autotweets set, so it has nothing to autotweet. Autotweet will randomly cycle between the new line separated tweets in the autotweet text input under the autotweet checkbox.

You have "Reply to mentions" checked, so the bot will reply to any tweets that mention the bot (it may take to bot an hour to reply).

You also have "Learn from friends/search tweets" checked, which I normally would not recommend. This will have the bot learn from friends tweet replies.

So I did fixed the things you mentioned here and it still won’t do what I want it to do. I want it to read, learn, and reply to random tweets that it finds through searches.

It did it a few times before, telling someone “Goodnight.”

But I want it to become more realistic than just that. What am I doing wrong?

Also I still need to know why it’s not auto cycling and learning without me having to manually do it.

Normally a Twitter bot is used to reply to relevant tweets that mention an account or business, or to direct messages, or to retweet tweets that are relevant to an account. Replying to random tweets is probably not a good idea an may result in your account being suspended by Twitter. Refer to Twitter's automation policies,
http://support.twitter.com/articles/76915-automation-rules-and-best-practices

Looking at your bot it is learning from the tweets that it is following (you can see these in the bot's "Training & Chat Logs" page by browsing "responses"). A Twitter bot will only responds to mentions, or tweets from a tweet search that match its "Reply Keywords/Hashtags", your reply keywords are empty, so it will not reply to tweets that do not mention it.

If you add reply keywords it will respond to searched tweets with those keywords, only if it has a trained response that is a "good" match. Here a "good" match normally means a 90% match. You can change that match % required in the bot's "Learning & Settings" using the "Discussion Match %", a lower value will have more matches, more replies.

For learning the default learning rate is 50%, since a 90% match is required, it would need to learn the same response multiple times to have a successful match. You can increase the learning rate from "Learning & Settings" using the "Learning Rate %", i.e. setting it to 100% would learn any tweet instantly. Also responses that use keywords will be more likely to match a tweet.

Is there any easy way to see which responses are good responses, or what the match of a tweet was? Any way to see how close it is to responding to something, or how well it is learning?

I wish there was a more direct way to communicate with you, I’m just trying to get my bot to learn correct words and phrases to reply to people with, but there are so many questions and I’ve searched this website up and down for answers.

My most pressing question is how exactly do I know that it’s learning, I input a few questions and answers but I don’t want to tell it every single thing to say, I want it to learn naturally. It already know 60k+ objects and that should be enough to learn already, I don’t understand.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just figured out the issue. When I have “learn from friends/search tweets” checked, it gives me a severe error and stops. This leads me to believe that it won’t learn or try to respond to any tweets. Do you know a fox for this? I would post the error but it’s extremely long, you can just run my bit on my account and see it yourself.

Thanks in advance.

Last update before I sleep, found a workaround to the above issue, if I run Twitter update and get the error, just IMMEDIATELY run it again and it will work fine. I believe this causes some things to be skipped, but it’s better than nothing until we get an update from the admin.