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  • Idea needed: search social networks for URLs and keywords in new posts or comments

Hi there,

I need help with a Zap idea. You see, I have this rss feed where I collect various articles that I find interesting from the web. I want to keep track of what people are saying about these articles on reddit and Twitter, but I don't want to follow specific profiles or hashtags. I just want a general search for any posts or comments that contain the links to the articles in my rss feed.

I didn't find any web tools or IPad apps that would do this. I thought Zapier might be a good tool for this, but I'm not sure how to set it up. Do you have any suggestions? Here's what I have in mind:

- The Zap should run once per day and scan all the articles in my rss feed, not just the new ones.
- The Zap should search reddit and Twitter for any posts or comments that have the links to the articles in the content.
- The Zap should add the links to those posts or comments to another rss feed that I already have setup in my Inoreader (already integrated with my Zapier).

The purpose of this is to stay updated on the discussions that mention the articles I like. I think it would be a cool way to discover new perspectives and opinions on the topics I'm interested in.

Do you think this is possible with Zapier? If so, how would you go about creating such a Zap? I would really appreciate your input on this. Thanks in advance!

Hi @Vesna!  

You could use the RSS by Zapier app to look for new articles added in your RSS feed, this wouldn’t run once a day and give you a list of all the new articles though. It would run multiple times a day for whenever a new article is added, and so each article would trigger the Zap individually.

Then you’d want to use search actions for Reddit and Twitter to look for a mention of the article that triggered the Zap. But looking at the actions available for the Reddit and Twitter apps it appears neither of those have such a search action. There are existing feature requests open for the kind of search actions you’d need here so I’ve gone ahead and added your votes to those. Interest in the Twitter feature request is being tracked in Community over here:

So for anyone that comes across this who is interested in being added to that feature request specifically please reach out on the other topic.

In the meantime, you could set up Zaps to monitor certain keywords/phrases in Reddit (New Post or Comment Matching Search trigger) and Twitter (Search Mention trigger). I know it’s not ideal but would that be a suitable alternative for now? 

Thank you, I tried just now and the two actions you suggest do find on both platforms URLs I gave them as manual search input. So, I guess it will work also with URLs picked up from Rss.

But how do I make Zap go through all RSS items ever day and not only new ones but  deliver me only new results?

Hi there @Vesna,

I’m jumping in to see if I can help!

The RSS integration triggers only off new items in an RSS feed so it is unlikely to go through entire RSS feeds each day. However, you can still be notified of new results using the following setup:

  1. Trigger: RSS by Zapier - New Item in Feed
  2. Action: Action step of your choice

This will only trigger with newly added posts or items after the Zap is turned on. It does not process the old ones.

Hopefully, this helps! 😊

That's the same proces as in @SamB reply, so not useful.

The other, worse solution, is if I keep the list of these URLs in Google sheet so Zap can go through all of them daily.

Hi @Vesna,

I'm sorry if our suggestions didn't meet your expectations for the desired outcome. In this case, I recommend reaching out to our certified Zapier Experts who can provide valuable assistance in streamlining your workflow and helping you achieve the results you're looking for.

You can get in touch with our Zapier Experts by visiting this link: https://zapier.com/experts.

Thank you.

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