For companies that use Slack, the immediate access to relevant information allows their teams to work more efficiently. With Slack, you can integrate a variety of apps to automate the integration of information.

Sometimes, that information the teams need will come from sources like Twitter. With a Slack Twitter integration, you can have messages from selected Twitter accounts appear in your Slack channels.

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When it’s time to do a Slack Twitter integration, you will need to follow a few simple steps. Afterward, the teams will be up and running with the latest information from Twitter in no time.

Preliminary Steps for a Slack Twitter Integration

Before you can start following certain Twitter accounts inside your Slack channels, you will need to complete a couple of preliminary steps.

• Sign up for a Twitter account
• Sign up for a Slack account (either a free or paid tier account)

Step 1: Find the Twitter App in the Slack Directory

Go to the Slack App Directory page. In the search bar near the top, type Twitter to search for the Twitter app integration.

Click the Add to Slack button. On the next page, click the Add Twitter Integration button.

Step 2: Give Slack Authorization to Use Your Twitter Account

You will need to have your Twitter account information available, so Slack can verify it to continue. Enter the user name or email address for your Twitter account, as well as your password. Click the Authorize App button.

Once you verify your Twitter account, you’ll be able to edit how Twitter works with your Slack account.

Step 3: Set up How the Slack Twitter Integration Will Work

After verifying your Twitter sign-in information, Slack will open the Integration Settings page, which allows you to set up how Slack will work with Twitter. This is the initial setup for your Slack Twitter integration, and you can make further changes later.

For each Twitter account you want to follow with your Slack account, you’ll need to run through the steps in the Integration Settings page each time.

The settings you can change within each section of the Integration Settings page include the following.

Authentication

This section just notifies you that your Twitter account verification occurred properly.

Auto-Post Tweets in Slack

In this section, enter the Twitter username for the account you want to track. This can be your own Twitter account, or it can be another Twitter account that you need to track from inside Slack. (Only add one account now. You can add other Twitter accounts later, if desired.)

Underneath the username, you can choose to show any tweets sent to the specified account, sent from the account, replies for the account, and retweets from the account. You can pick one or more of these options for the types of tweets you want to display in Slack.

You will need to select at least one of the checkboxes, or no tweets will show up in your Slack channels.

We would suggest sticking only with tweets from the specified account. If you also select the tweets to the account, you potentially will greatly increase the number of tweets that appear in your Slack channels, and many of those incoming tweets may be off-topic.

Post to Channel

In this section, you can specify which of your Slack channels will display the tweets. (You can pick more channels later, if desired.)

Click Create a New Channel if you want to display the tweets in a channel not yet created in your Slack account.

You will need to select a channel, or you won’t be able to save your changes.

Descriptive Label

If you want to give this Slack Twitter integration a different name, so you can find it easier in your list of integrations, you can enter it in this text box.

Customize Name

You can change the username for the Twitter account, if you would prefer it to have a different display name in your Slack account. Enter the new name in the text box, or leave the box blank, as this is an optional step.

Customize Icon

If you don’t want the Twitter icon displayed in your Slack account with this particular set of tweets, you can pick a custom image, or you can select an emoji to display. This is an optional step.

If you are following multiple Twitter accounts, you may want to use a specific icon for each account, so it’s easier to identify each one.

Preview Message

As you make changes throughout the Integration Settings window, they will show up in the Preview Message section. If you don’t like how the integration looks, you can start the process over again.

Otherwise, click Save Settings to save the changes you’ve made.

Disable or Remove

At the top of the Integration Settings page on the right, you’ll see Disable and Remove buttons. Click either of these buttons to disable or remove the Twitter account associated with this Integration Settings page.

Step 4: Viewing the Tweets

After saving your choices, open the channel in Slack where you chose to display the tweets. As the accounts you’ve chosen to follow send new tweets, they will show up in the channel. The exact URL for each tweet will appear with the message in Slack, so your team members can click on it to visit the Twitter account.

Step 5: Adding New Twitter Accounts

If you want to add a new integration for another Twitter account, click on Add Apps on the left side of the Slack window. In the Connect Your Tools window, click on the Twitter button to open the Integrations Settings page. (You may need to click Configuration on the next screen, depending on your Slack settings.)

You then can return to Step 3 in our list and set up the new Twitter account to add to your Slack channel.

You also will need to follow this step if you want to add one Twitter account to multiple channels in your Slack account.

Step 6: Configure Your Twitter Account Integrations In Slack

From the Integration Settings page, you can see all of the Twitter accounts you’re following with Slack, and you can manage them as needed.

In the upper left corner of the Integration Settings window, click on the Twitter link (to the right of the Browse Apps link).

In the Add Twitter to Slack window, click on Configuration (to the right of Description). As you scroll down the page, you’ll see the configurations you currently have for Twitter accounts in your Slack channels.

To edit any of these particular Twitter accounts, click on the pencil icon button to the right of the account settings you want to edit. You then can change the settings in the Integration Settings window, or you can disable or remove the integration with the Twitter account in the upper right corner of the page.

Click Save Settings after you make the changes. (If you click Disable or Remove instead of changing the other settings, you do not need to click Save Settings.)

Other Options for Creating a Slack Twitter Integration

If you created other app integrations with Slack in the past, it is possible that those apps give you the ability to follow Twitter accounts already, meaning you don’t have to set up the Twitter Slack integration. Some of the other apps that integrate with Slack and provide Twitter account tracking through Slack include the following.

Zapier

The Zapier app collects information from a variety of apps and passes that information into the connected Slack channels. It automates many tasks you may be performing manually in Slack currently.

When integrating Twitter into Slack via Zapier, you can perform tasks including:

• Adding any new mentions of your Twitter account into Slack
• Receiving notifications when your Twitter account adds new followers
• Creating an automated message in Slack that goes out to all of your new Twitter followers as soon as they follow you
• Sharing all of your tweets, with or without replies to those tweets, in Slack
• Creating new tweets directly from a Slack message

IFTTT

The IFTTT app automatically collects information from the apps and devices you may be using already, and it can integrate with Slack to add that information to the desired Slack channels, including information from Twitter.

When integrating Twitter into Slack via IFTTT, you can perform tasks including:

• Adding a post to Slack after finding any tweets that match a search term you’ve specified
• Adding a post to Slack after finding any tweets that include a specific hashtag
• Receiving notifications when your Twitter account adds new followers
• Offering a template to send new tweets to the desired Slack channel
• Adding favorite tweets into the desired Slack channel

Automate.io

The Automate.io app takes information from all of the different cloud apps that your team uses, sharing that information in Slack, keeping all team members up to date.

When integrating Twitter into Slack via Automate.io, you can perform tasks including:

Slack Twitter Preview

• Receiving messages about new mentions for you on Twitter
• Creating an automated message in Slack that goes out to all of your new Twitter followers as soon as they follow you
• Adding a post in Slack after finding any tweets that match a search term you’ve specified

Within Automate.io, you can choose to have certain Twitter events appear in direct messages or channel messages, which may help quite a bit with the organization of these tweets.

3 Ideas for Using Your Slack Twitter Integration

When choosing to integrate Twitter with your Slack account, you will receive numerous benefits. Here are three ideas for using Twitter within Slack.

1. Keep the Team Up to Date on Important Twitter Accounts

When you, as your team’s Slack administrator, determine which Twitter accounts you should follow as part of your Slack channels, you ensure that only appropriate accounts are part of the integration.

This makes it easier to keep your team focused on the information it needs to perform its work each day. Rather than allowing individual team members to decide the accounts to follow on their own as part of their workday, you can ensure that information from only the most important accounts is part of your official Twitter follows inside Slack.

2. Keep Up to Date on Your Company’s News

If your company does updates about corporate news through Twitter, adding your company’s Twitter account to your Slack channels can keep all of your team members informed.

They won’t need to have access to their own Twitter accounts to keep tabs on the company’s news announcements. Being able to follow the company’s Twitter inside the Slack app they’re already using for work should help them remain more productive during the day, rather than checking their personal Twitter accounts on their smartphones regularly.

3. Receive Updates from Your Service Providers

If your team has multiple pieces of cloud software it uses, it can be helpful to know about potential outages or updates to the software as soon as they happen.

If the software maker’s support team sends out updates on Twitter about these changes for its software, adding these Twitter accounts to your Slack channels will allow your team members to plan appropriately for changes to the software.

3 Potential Drawbacks to a Slack Twitter Integration

There are a few reasons why you may not want to integrate Twitter with your Slack channels, including these three potential drawbacks.

Overwhelming Number of Tweets

Major Slack Twitter

Depending on how many Twitter accounts you choose to follow through Slack, you could end up with a huge number of messages inside your Slack channels. This could overwhelm your team members, leaving them with information overload.

Carefully choose the number of Twitter accounts you choose to follow through Slack. Only link the most important Twitter accounts that are relevant to each Slack channel, which should keep the number of messages containing tweets to a reasonable number to manage.

If you find that a particular Twitter account is creating too many messages, you can disable or remove it through the steps we described earlier.

Sparking Off-Topic Conversations

Slack is such a strong tool for allowing employees to communicate over real time or asynchronous chat messaging that you may find your employees using it to communicate about numerous non-work topics. Someone makes a non-work post in the channel, and it ends up morphing into an extensive conversation, creating a distraction during work hours.

When employees rely on Slack all day, keeping in touch with coworkers about work topics, it’s natural that they would also use the communications app for some social topics on occasion.

If you’d like to keep these non-work messages to a minimum, adding a Twitter integration into Slack may not be the best choice, especially if you choose to follow some Twitter accounts that post tweets about both work items and social items. Off-topic tweets may generate quite a number of off-topic conversations in Slack, reducing the productivity of your team.

Inappropriate Topics

Some tweets, even from trusted Twitter accounts, may deal with topics or may have language you don’t want to introduce to your Slack channels. For example, posts dealing with political topics are common on Twitter, but you may not want to introduce these types of topics into your Slack channels.

You may want to closely watch the posts of a Twitter account that you’re planning to integrate into Slack for a couple of weeks, just to gain a feel for the types of tweets the account generates, before actually adding it.

Tech Reporter

Jack Slack Twitter

Slack is far from the first tech company to steal the idea behind buzzy, audio-based social media platform Clubhouse. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are on it, too. The difference is that Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield didn’t pretend he was rolling out some all-new feature. He said the quiet part out loud—directly to Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison’s face.

Roger Slack Twitter

Butterfield made his announcement on Clubhouse, in a chat with tech executives that also featured Davison. “I’ve always believed the ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ thing, so we’re just building Clubhouse into Slack, essentially,” Butterfield said. He gave a quick rundown of all the Clubhouse features he planned to replicate on his larger and better-funded platform, and then wrapped up by quipping, “So look out for Clubhouse built into Slack.”

This, of course, is how most big tech companies operate. Despite the fanfare about innovative prowess, they frequently just acquire or copy new startups that come along with clever ideas. For example, when Snapchat came up with the idea of “stories,” short-lived photo posts that would disappear after a day, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter soon stole it. It was a baldfaced play to neutralize a new rival’s competitive advantage by cloning its distinguishing features—and it worked. There are now about twice as many people posting Instagram stories each day as there are daily users on Snapchat.

Slack vs. Microsoft

Download Slack

Butterfield knows plenty about copycat apps. After he launched Slack in 2013, Microsoft came along to talk about buying it from him. When those negotiations fell through, Microsoft created a copycat version of Slack called Teams, which quickly eclipsed Slack and now has 10 times as many users. Butterfield has complained bitterly about Microsoft’s tactics, and Slack filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in the EU.

Usually, though, tech companies try to hide the fact that they’re copying a competitor by presenting stolen features as original ideas. When Facebook announced its Clubhouse clone, a spokeswoman said: “We’ve been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people.” Twitter announced its Clubhouse copycat as “a small experiment focused on the intimacy of the human voice.” LinkedIn touted its Clubhouse rip-off as “a unique audio experience connected to your professional identity.”

So it’s refreshing to hear Butterfield come out and plainly say “we’re just building Clubhouse into Slack.” It’s the kind of candor you might expect from someone who has been on the other side of the clone wars—and simply accepted it as part of doing business in tech.