Why use scheduled tweets?
HootSuite can schedule your tweets -- and make life easier
Few of us have the time to be on Twitter all the time. In this post, we explain how to make the most of a well-known HootSuite feature: scheduled tweets.
Improving visibility
If you send more tweets, your Twitter handle and your content become more more visible. Scheduling your content to come out at regular intervals during the day translates to improved visibility, and has the additional benefit of being less interruptive. Many business and power users have told us that scheduling content in advance allows them to focus on other Twitter experiences such as retweeting, sourcing new content streams or having conversations.
Sending time-sensitive tweets
Some tweets need to go out at specific times: announcements, promotions, and customer service responses. This is especially true when your target audience lives in a different time zone than you. In Los Angeles, if you’re starting your workday, someone in London is finishing theirs. With scheduled tweets, you’re able to ensure your followers are reached at the appropriate time.
Controlling content flow
Nobody likes to be inundated with a torrent of tweets. Many Twitter users have a lot to say but do not want to come across as spammy. Instead of sending 20 tweets in the span of 5 minutes, why not send 20 tweets over the course of 10 hours? By staggering your tweets, your messages reach the world in a more cohesive, less obtrusive manner.
Optimizing for traffic
If you know that your links are more likely to be clicked at a particular time, HootSuite lets you schedule accordingly, to maximize the penetration of your content. Public relations people or media workers familiar with Jack Shafer’s news cycle theory will see the benefit of this feature immediately.
These are all good reason to schedule your tweets. But everyone has their own reason for using this HootSuite feature. What is yours?
Related posts:
- HootSuite Integrates Lists, Facebook and LinkedIn We’ve added new features, and we think you’ll like them....
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
I use scheduled tweets to post reminders shortly before an event begins or as continuing reminders during a multi-day event. I can set the tweet up a month or more in advance.
[Reply]
I am going to do this shortly, one moment please.
[Reply]
4:00 pm to be submitted.
[Reply]
My company manages twitter accounts for several clients. Using Hoostsuite to schedule tweets we can spend a few hours researching and brainstorming, and then schedule a client’s tweets for the day, or week.
The only drawback to this, is that the ‘age’ of the ow.ly links we use is displayed in the Hootsuite frame. This has raised questions about how scheduled tweets are perceived.
[Reply]
I live on scheduled tweets. Best feature yet!
[Reply]
“You know from your analytics that if you were to tweet a link, most traffic would happen at 6am.” Are these analytics a feature in HootSuite. Can you tell when your followers are most likely to be tweeting?
[Reply]
I have used the scheduler this week for one of my clients and found it very effective. With everything else that has to be done it is sometimes difficult to remember to tweet certain things that need to be sent out on certain days and this has solved the problem for me.
I will now introduce it to others as a great idea.
Thanks
[Reply]
We need re-occuring tweets. Any idea when you can do that? This is a critical requirement. Otherwise, this package is what we need.
[Reply]
All great reasons. My personal faves are #1 (I know I don’t read all the tweets in my home feed- just those on top at the time I’m looking) and #3 (i.e. Not annoying my followers!)
In addition to those, here are my personal reasons:
1. Being able to put regularly scheduled topics out for a particular theme day (I have Twitter Tips on Tuesday, Facebook Fridays, etc). As I think of the tip for that day, I’ll just schedule it out for the next time that day of the week rolls around.
2. Retweeting announcements/reminders for events. (Alltop reports retweeting your own tweets on regular intervals/different times of days IS effective. )
3. REMINDING ME to tweet about something! If I know I want to tweet about an event I attended, or have a particular type of tweet, I schedule out a reminder to myself- and review my ‘pending tweets’ regularly. I make sure to replace the reminder with the actual tweet before the time passes.
[Reply]
p.s. You just became my Twitter tip for Tuesday…
[Reply]
Hootsuite saves me a lot of time and stress. The Hootlet is a godsend ( would love a “blog this” equivalent.
As a mainstream and new media journalist op/ed producer I need to follow news cycles for my work to maximise reach – scheduled tweets does the job better than anything else, and when informed by your built in stats feature it is mightily effective.
Great Job, I’d like to do a Skype interview with one of your team on the app & your plans for the future, and get any links to good video about the hootsuite suite.
cheers
tony @perthones
[Reply]
I love to schedule tweets using HootSuite! I don’t have all day to sit in front of the computer and tweet all the things I need to say, and since we have quite a few international followers, I like to be able to spread out my tweets! It takes me a minute or two each day to schedule my tweets so I can reach more followers as I’m sleeping! This is such a great feature! Holler atcha HootSuite!
[Reply]
I can’t wait to get started! I think people must get tired of reading tweets all about one topic at the same time. This way I can still use Twitter to gather research and not blast people with tweets from my soapbox.
[Reply]
I signed up to this site months ago, because I immediately recognized its application as the ONLY way to maximize twitter benefits. Somehow, I forgot the name of the site, and was able to find it only because of a Facebook posting. . . . I look forward to using the updated version. Tweet on!!!!!
[Reply]
This feature is not working – tweets are sent regardless of setting
[Reply]
Great point and great feature.
It would be interesting to see a chart or some stats on views, RT’s, clicks etc for an actual account using scheduled tweets as opposed to one that does not.
Does anyone know of any case studies etc that might compare the two?
[Reply]
Good post. Not useful if goal is to have meaningful conversations with audience and if one want’s to engage one’s audience.
[Reply]
@todd Repeating tweets are something we’ve considered. This may be something we build in the future.
[Reply]
@peterdcox Send a tweet to @hootsuite_help with the specific tweet taht went out at the wrong time and we can look into the issue.
[Reply]
20 tweets in 5 minutes? Please.
[Reply]
Im going to use scheduled tweets for a marketing campaign, it’ll be hands free once I set it up so it’ll save me time and having tweets sent out when im in bed.
[Reply]
Our site has restaurant and dining coupons with expiration dates. Scheduled tweets is important to remind followers to use the coupons before they expire.
Twitter is a perfect venue – and Hootsuite makes it seamless.
It would help us if you could have a repetitive schedule option for a tweet!
Thanks for all the great work.
[Reply]
@Manoj Jasra
You’re right, but obviously, that’s not the purpose of many tweeters.
[Reply]
How do I use Hootsuite without having “From Hootsuite” appear at the bottom of scheduled tweets?
[Reply]
Help! How do you schedule tweets as you’ve changed the site and http://hootsuite.com/faq#faq_3_4 instruction link isn’t working?
PLease let me know. Thanks,
[Reply]
Great.
[Reply]
Once I schedule a Tweet, can I go back in to edit it before it goes out?
[Reply]
Question:
When someone clicks on a ow.ly, does the page linked get credit for a page view? I ask because of the ow.ly frame. How does that work? I wouldn’t want to use the ow.ly unless I see actual traffic results. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
[Reply]
AM I signed up?
[Reply]
I really wish more people used this. It’s very invasive to receive over five Tweets in a row, no matter who they come from.
[Reply]
It’s a really great tool. I’ve scheduled tweets with a link to my book for 100 years in advance.
Yep, I’m a tech-absurdist.
[Reply]
This feature is why I signed up for Hootsuite. It is critical to schedule certain updates so that businesses can focus on servicing clients, customers, and other needs essential to the business. Citibank did a survey that indicated that most small businesses are not using social media thoroughly, yet Staples in a separate survey indicated that 62% of businesses were online and experimenting. So there is a disconnect of efficiency that needs to be addressed. Features such as a scheduled tweet reduce the disconnect if used effectively.
[Reply]
Waw This site i Excellence!!!
first when i schedule my tweets , then I see waw if this is true then mi live is not only easy I can do a lot of more Business !
and a new Idea MAKE A SCHEDULE SO YOU CAN THE WHOLE YEAR WITH ONE CLICK!
[Reply]
This an excellent feature for business Twitter users and avoids you flooding the timeline. Just be careful thought that you don’t overdo it as you’ll appear to be a spambot.
[Reply]
Does twitter have any restrictions against recurring tweets? How do we prevent from having accounts suspended? TweetLater shut down their recurring tweet option b/c of this.
[Reply]
Hi,
Would be great to be able to schedule the same tweet sveral time without having to create a new tweet again and again
ex : I create a tweet, hit the send later button and schedule one tomorow, one in a week, one a month later…
thanks
[Reply]
Love the automatic features and the scheduled tweets are the best time saver of all times. It would be a great add on if you could find a way to do recurring tweets in a way that doesn’t violate TOS. Good luck with that challenge:)
[Reply]
Before I didn’t see any need to schedule tweets, now I’m learning that tweet scheduling is the greatest invention since social media took flight.
[Reply]
Now I can schedule volleyball press releases intermittently without overwhelming my readers. I was looking for alternatives and luckily Hootsuite was a referral.
[Reply]
As with any automation tool, you still have to be smart about how often you have it send tweets. I think this is a nice tool when used correctly and responsibly
[Reply]
I’ll try this one..
[Reply]
Readers of my Blog span the Globe, so I have multiple time zones to consider. Scheduling a “one-off” Tweet is a handy feature. Being able to schedule a Tweet for 1PM California time and 3 PM in London is another issue I have to tackle. I suspect I will use a combination of Twitter tools to handle my information disbursement needs and HootSuite is one them, along with Tycoon Scheduler and LabTweets.
[Reply]
How can you see posts that you’ve scheduled, or remove future scheduled posts before they’re live?
[Reply]
A question on many student’s mind each day is “what’s for lunch (substitute brfsk, dinner, etc.) Tweets are a great way to publish the menu highlights for the upcoming meal. Scheduling these Tweets enables us to post the info at the most opportune time for our customer – about 15 minutes prior to the start of the next meal period (as suggested by our customers.) Scheduling enables us to load days of info in advance, then let Owly to it’s thing. Great feature.
[Reply]
Really cool I never thought about scheduled tweets I always thought about using twitter as a spontaneous tool. I like the post and the comments very informative.
[Reply]
I left a comment in the the wrong spot for this post. I use twitter just when it hits me to do it. I really appreciate the help I have gotten from this great blog. For marketing I see so many benefits to scheduling tweets. Thanks again!
[Reply]
Anyone know if you can cancel a scheduled Tweet?
[Reply]
Support Reply:
January 3rd, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Absolutely. View your Pending Tweets column and edit the tweet or delete it using the buttons in the top right hand corner of the tweet in question.
[Reply]
Tiffany Reply:
June 24th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
When I try to delete pending tweets by deleting it with the X, it still posts to my Facebook. When it asks if I want to delete it, I say yes and it deletes but how can I get it to NOT post on my Facebook?
[Reply]
Dave Olson Reply:
June 24th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Hi Tiffany, I’ve filed your note as a trouble ticket to see if we can figure out what’s going on. We’ll be in touch with what we find.
I know this post is a bit old but I was searching for the topic and found it. I think it’s such a neat idea for certain types of tweets. Personal stuff is not a big deal to me but I love to talk about products and review them. Sometimes I have one to sell on ebay after I’m done reviewing it and many local news casts are now reviewing products on their 6 and 11 o’clock news shows. I’m talking about As Seen On TV products which I like to use.
I realized a long time ago that when these products get scheduled press, the searches go up for the item. So know that a new product like dog-e-minder is being featured as a “try it before you buy it” type segments, I can set my tweet to go when I think real time search volume will be up.
It might only be a theory, but I think I’m right.
[Reply]