Some of you might already know this and some of you might not know that I schedule my tweets on twitter. So here is my confession! I schedule my tweets and I know a lot of people out there dislike the use of automating tweets.
So I want to explain to you why I schedule my tweets. First of all my account is not on automated tweets. Its on scheduled tweets which I manually insert in the morning before I head to classes or before I sleep. I have a lot of reasons why I schedule my tweets and some of them is because I want to spread the tweets.
So why do I schedule tweets?
1. Spreading my tweets
I read a lot of tweets shared by a lot of great people from a lot of different sources like chirrps, google reader, and from my twitter list. So if I share all my tweets after I read them I’ll be spamming everyones pages with my tweets. So what I do is, after reading them I schedule them to post every hour, its easy to put all those great tweets to go throughout the day because I only need to read 24 articles/tweets and trust me I read more than 24 articles in a day but if I have a lot of time on hands I usually post 2-4 tweets when I’m on twitter and 2 every hour when I am asleep.
2. Time Zone
One thing about twitter is there is a big difference when it come to time zone, I was talking to @2cre8 on 
twitter and she forgotten that my time was totally opposite. It was 4am my on my end. Time time difference in Asia and America is nearly 12 hours. So whenever its 10pm here, its around 10am in the United States. So if I have an early class around 8am, I schedule my tweets to be posted once every hour till 8am or till my classes are over. After getting back from classes I’ll check the replies and reply everyone as soon as possible and read more tweets and schedule them again till I get back from afternoon classes. So its like read > schedule > reply > read > schedule > reply of course I don’t automate conversations.
3. Meeting New People
Since I have a big time differenec its hard for me to connect with a lot of people in the United States, I do connect with a group of them especially when they just got up from bed and ready to start their day. That is usually the time where I log off. So when I schedule my tweets I manage to spread my tweets throughout their day and meet them especially when they comment on the tweets and telling me what they think by giving their opinion. I usually reply them after I get up from my sleep of after classes when I have time.
4. Managing My Time
I am sure we don’t really have a lot of time to spend on twitter and other social networks. So after schedulling my tweets I will try to get other work done like blogging since I know I have 1-2 tweets that will be posted within that hour, I don’t really have to go back to twitter until I get my blog post done. People still will get tweets and they might comment on them which I am able to reply after getting my blog done.
5. Spread the Brand
Spread the brand? I think everyone has a brand whether they are on twitter, facebook or in reality. Everyone is branded with a name or an icon. Look at Donald Trump and the Trump brand for example. I remember watching Donald Trump on apprentice when I was 16. I remembered his name ever since. Now that is a good brand. On twitter if you want a good brand you have to stand out and be different. Whether you be the funniest guy out there, the most infomative guy out there, or be great like @tweetsmarter posting awesome tips on twitter and social media 24/7. @Flipbooks has a brand too. He is one of the most retweeted person out there. His timeline is packed with great stuff that goes viral and he is able to do so because people loves his tweets. I am trying to do that too. Last year I only post less than 20 tweets in a day and now I am increasing the number of tweets I’ve met so many people who enjoyed reading it and connecting with me.
So if you ask me whether you should schedule your tweets too? I’ll say, it depends. What are you goals? What are you trying to achieve on twitter?
So what do you think? Should you schedule or automate tweets?
I love love love this post! Thank you for writing about this controversial topic. I agree with you 100% !!! 🙂
Good post Aaron. Perfect timing too. I'd like to schedule a few tweets as well for the 'time zone' reasons you mention above. Many of my fave people are up and spreading the good times while I'm fast asleep. I decided today it'd be a great way to be awake without losing sleep. And of course when I wake I can say a more personal hello if they've @'d my brains out while my eyes were closed. Plus the meeting new peeps in various time zones is also attractive.
Good post Aaron. Perfect timing too. I'd like to schedule a few tweets as well for the 'time zone' reasons you mention above. Many of my fave people are up and spreading the good times while I'm fast asleep. I decided today it'd be a great way to be awake without losing sleep. And of course when I wake I can say a more personal hello if they've @'d my brains out while my eyes were closed. Plus the meeting new peeps in various time zones is also attractive.
Thanks so much for sharing one of your secrets of tweeting success!
From afar, it looked like you simply never slept 🙂 This sounds like a great strategy for being able to achieve a more even type of spread of tweets than would be achievable otherwise.
I agree with all your points here =) I occasionally schedule my tweets primarily bec of time and because if i tweeted everything that I want to Tweet then I would most probably fill up the stream of the people who follow me. You rock!! 🙂
I love your candidness and honesty on this controversial issue! You're soooo right about the time zone differences ha ha! And you're so on target about connecting to people across the world and the ability to spread your tweets out via automated tweets. For me, the key is to balance it with periodic and meaningful engagement. A truly must-read post! ;D
Points agreed!
Points agreed!
Confession: Me too!
But you already know that 🙂 Still, thanks again for the tip.
A totally honest post! Love it!
I am with you all the way Aaron. Everyone of us have only 24 hours in a day and managing our time well while connecting in a personal way is a great skill to have.
Thanks Diana, you're always super supportive! 🙂 ~hugs~
Nice seeing you here Vincent,
Thanks for agreeing with me, a lot of people thinks its bad but happy they are seeing my point of view
Oh oh! big public confession eh! wait… i remember telling u i schedule and u catching me scheduling 🙂
Thanks Nikita 🙂
Ohh! you saw this Kathy! LoL! I thought you were going to miss this so I wanted to send this to you. LoL!
Agree! balancing is important. Well I talk a lot.. hopefully its balanced LoL! hope all is well
Hello Misty!
Great to see you were! LoL, I didn't know you schedule your tweets! LoL! you always seem to be around! I didn't realized that! Enjoy the weekends.
Hello Dorlee,
Its just a small portion of the success, the real success is engaging with everyone 🙂
You're doing that well on the other end 🙂
Thanks Tina,
Can't wait for you to be back on twitter again! you've been missed by so many of us!
Hi Aaron! I wrote a post around a year ago on the same thing. It was tough for followers when I used to turn out 50-100 tweets per hour. Scheduling some of them makes it easier on them and better time management wise for me. The one thing I do have to say: I never have nor would I have tweets go out if I wasn't actually at my computer. I'm always around if I have tweets go out. But that is me.
Scheduled or not you tweet great stuff and even after the confession we all still love you… 🙂
Great post I love it.
Ps: You confessed months ago… :-p
I agree. Scheduling tweets is very different from automating. It's content that you've chosen, not a bot selecting based on words. I'm always telling people who post 50+ posts in a row that I'd rather see their info spread out over time, otherwise I ignore ALL of them!
I used to schedule my tweets and actually want to get back into the habit: there's no big reason why I stopped-just disorganisation! My reasons for scheduling are also to do with time-zones and not wanting to clog up followers' streams. Great post Aaron, you've motivated me to start scheduling again!
Perfectly acceptable to me. I actually post tweets overnight to target Europe. I can't stop running my startup just to tweet for our European friends 🙂
Great post, Aaron! I have honestly considered setting up clocks on my wall set to the different time zones like they used to do in the 70s on the US national news broadcasts to remind me what time it is for my friends around the world. Your honesty is appreciated. It also helps explain logically why a reply may be delayed. 🙂
Mike,
Yes I wanted to explain everything in this post, I do reply, just late LoL!
I currently have 3 times set on my desktop. Using a little application for windows xp.
If you're on vista you will have more choices.
Aaron
Great commentary aaron. I too use some tools to schedule tweets. I like to drip a tweet every hour or so just so people have something to talk about. Many people who are doing it poo poo it at the same time. Rock on buddy!
For some reason, I feel bad about doing it. I do it because I try to spread information to multiple timezones and have friends, family and potential clients all over the world. I'm an American living in Asia, and previous to this job, I was working in Africa. I've lived in the South Pacific, Australia and both coasts of the US …
So I feel legitimate in that my peoples are spread out — yet still, I feel guilty or that I'm abusing Twitter for some reason. Maybe because I have such a huge respect for the medium, and have such a low threshold for TweetBots. But — its great to see you put this all out there.
If we talk about it, it becomes less shady (even if its not actually shady at all). Thanks for great post.
I couldn't stop myself commenting here Aaron 😀 After reading your view point, I very much agree – if one wants spread his/her influential tweets or brand, it's important to schedule the tweets. You rock and this post too!!!! 🙂
These are 5 very good reasons to schedule tweets and I couldn't agree more. I also schedule tweets for all the reasons listed above and more. I also have “in-person” conversations on Twitter so Im not an automaton…there is a real person even behind those scheduled tweets.
Thats was a very cogent explanation Aaron, you made some excellent points 🙂
These are 5 very good reasons to schedule tweets and I couldn't agree more. I also schedule tweets for all the reasons listed above and more. I also have “in-person” conversations on Twitter so Im not an automaton…there is a real person even behind those scheduled tweets.
Thats was a very cogent explanation Aaron, you made some excellent points 🙂
I have a confession… I automate some of my tweets.
But I believe in smart automation only. The only tweets I automate are from those thought-leaders that I know publish high quality content on a regular basis.
Am I pushing their work sight unseen? Yes.
Does it matter? Not really. Because I trust them enough to not put out crap posts. I've thought about scheduling some of my tweets too, I just haven't found the way that will work best for me yet. But I like the way you do it here.
Great post! I also agree 😉
I didn’t know this was a controversial topic. As a teacher, I think it’s a great idea to schedule tweets. If I spent my entire day replying to twitter feeds, when would I do my job!
People ussually us who scheduled tweets are spammer 🙁 it requires a lot of efforts to do it. ~hugs~ thx for the post 🙂