How often should you tweet?
How often do you send Twitter updates out? Is it consistent or completely random and varies? How much is too much and how much is too little? And what about whether you should send scheduled tweets out or only “real live” updates?
There is a lot of debate about how frequently you should tweet. I’m often asked, particularly as I tweet A LOT and also am acutely aware that I go against the norm. In fact so much so that I rarely advocate people tweet as much as I do.
Whilst I do tweet a lot – I have around 4 scheduled tweets going out an hour (over a 24 hour period – I want to reach my American friends) in addition to “real” tweets it soon adds up. Don’t forget you also have to add up all the replies to mentions and before I knew it I recently hit my 100,000th update.
But let’s take it back a little, I’ve been using Twitter now since 2008 so it’s taken me over 4 years to get to this stage. Twitter has a habit of shutting down accounts that are relatively new that suddenly have lots of activity – and that could be you following lots of people or sending masses of tweets out. I recommend with all new accounts you take it slowly and build up not only your following but also your updates and gradually increase it to avoid your account being shut down. And whatever you do, don’t use any automatic tool on new accounts as that’s also likely to impact your account getting shut down.
I think it’s important to look at the types of tweets you send out as well – I genuinely think that’s more important than the frequency of how often/little you tweet. If all your tweets are purely promotional i.e. selling (or spamming for want of a better word) then you’re not going to have a hugely successful Twitter campaign.
[pullquote]It’s not about consuming content, but sharing it, passing it on and adding to it @ariannahuff [/pullquote]
To be successful in social media you need to engage AND provide great content that provides value. The more value you provide the more likely your tweets will be shared (RT’d). For me it really is a no brainer and yet I’m so surprised by the amount of people who just don’t get this. So many people are obsessed with the frequency and yet they don’t realise that actually it isn’t necessarily about that.
[pullquote]If you do not have great content it does not matter at all how you deliver it. @unmarketing[/pullquote]
I’ve also been asked how I have so many followers, as every day I get 100’s of new followers from doing very little. The truth is that by providing as much great content and value not only people retweet (RT) my stuff but they also recommend people follow me, curate my content, share it and many other opportunities have opened up too.
You have to remember you can’t please everyone, and to some people sending out 10 tweets a day may seem simply too much and others may not even notice them as their home feed moves so quickly. It’s about working out what you feel comfortable with and why you want to use Twitter, what your goals are. For me, I use Twitter to connect and engage with like minded people. I also use it to stay up-to-date and informed about what’s happening and drive traffic back to my website. Twitter remains my number one Traffic generation source.
I mentioned earlier whether you should use tools to automate this. Currently the tools I use are Buffer, Hootsuite and Socialoomph. There is and continues to be mixed opinions on whether you should send scheduled tweets out or not, in some ways the whole automation of Twitter can be a little like marmite – some people hate it others love it. As always if you do chose to use automation tools make sure you have a happy balance to get optimum results. If you’re not sending a combination of real tweets and only scheduled you’re not going to get the best results (not to mention you are in effect just spamming) but people will soon start to unfollow you.
What do you think? How often are you tweeting? Do you like to use automated tools? Please do leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Lilach
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30 Responses to How often should you tweet?
Hi Lilach
I use a mixture of scheduled tweets and real ones every day )I’m not as active as you lol) also I retweet most days, either from blog commenting or from the feed. I find I am slowly building up my following and connecting with some great people.
Thanks for sharing
Pauline
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This is a great topic that I have had several discussions about to the extent where I am now running a market test across all my Social Media sites just to prove the point. I am a completely new business and I am relatively young so definitely no expert but I aspire to me.
I use Twitter not to sell my business but to engage and build relationships with businesses in my local area. The other reason I use Twitter is as a learning resource- there are so many amazing people out there and I’m like a sponge, I just want to soak it all in and become better at what I do. I am a big believer in slow and steady wins the race- you can definitely tweet too much to the point where it deters just as much as it attracts. Out-with my social experimentation, I use Hootsuite on occasion to schedule some interesting content in the form of others blog posts or articles and mine (although I only have 2 since I just started). I do this because there are times where I am not available and I don’t want people to forget I’m still there. If your a professional, your going to have work to do so if you can take the weight off through scheduling some of your tweets then thats only going to be a good thing. You don’t want to spend all your time earning a living and forgetting to have a life! However, engagement is the number one rule of social media and I would way rather have a couple hundred followers that are fully engaged than 50,000 who aren’t really interested. My whole business philosophy is that customers buy the person before they buy the product/service.
Just one opinion from a newbie!
Twitter: marketmehappy
Hi Lilach, I use pretty much the same tools for automated feeds and try to send out at least three or four posts on twitter a day, sometimes I get carried away engaging with folk! But yes it is important to engage with others, and it is also my main lead generation tool
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Hi! I understand this is sort of off-topic however I had to ask. Does operating a well-established blog like yours take a massive amount work? I’m brand new to operating a blog however I do write in my diary everyday. I’d like to start a blog so I will be able to share my own experience and views online. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or tips for brand new aspiring bloggers. Thankyou!
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Thanks for the article, though I don’t know if you ever actually answered your question.
I definitely agree that the number of tweets you send out can vary, depending on the content you share. There are some people I follow that post as much as you and I sometimes wish they would tweet more, because they always have good content! On the other hand, some people I follow that tweet at your pace are almost exclusively automated, so I keep seeing the same messages from them over and over and over. It’s maddening.
I posted an article this week regarding tips for Twitter success and it touched on this subject. You can check it out here: http://bit.ly/lwtwitter. I’d be interested in your input. For some people, 2-3 tweets a day is plenty. For businesses, 1 original tweet an hour can suffice, not including replies and such.
Thanks again!
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Twitter: luftigwarren
Wow, that’s a lot of Twittering! You have reached your limit of tweets for the hour. Try again later.
Twitter: MarkGKirshner
Good points, however i’ve seen some people flailing about with over 100,000 Twitter updates, and only 10,000 followers. Don’t be that guy. I think your update vs follower ratio needs to be alot tighter than that to make more effective use of your social media time.
EverNoticeThat recently posted..Should I Buy The New iPad? The iPad 3 Review
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I prefer to manually tweet and update my twitter account. Twitter has now been a bridge between the actual consumers and the companies. It is a great place to reach your target market.
Becca recently posted..Hello world!
I sometimes wish they would tweet more, because they always have good content!.Thanks for sharing.
A few of my tweets are automated. When I first started out I sent tweets that way all the time because that was what I was told was the smart marketing way to use Twitter. However, as time went on and i became comfortable using Twitter I found balance between auto systems and going on Twitter and posting manually. I like it that way best I get to see what others are doing. Valuable information I would miss otherwise. I would say I tweet about 6-8 times a day sometimes more if I have a campaign going on. Loved this post will bookmark your blog.
Twitter: lydiajbrown
I made my Twitter account a few years ago for my own personal life, but then I started to have a business and I converted it into a more serious one. It helps me reach clients just only using my phone. It’s a good method in business!
Meghan Cornay recently posted..4 Chic Ways to Celebrate Earth Day
Hi Lilach! Thanks for the heads up to not use automated tools on new Twitter accounts. I have used one for our Twitter account but I will refrain from using it for the mean time.
Twitter: Musesland
I tend to tweet when I remember and that’s not good! Better at Facebook so FB business page now automatically tweets for me and I TRY to remember to check character length …
Twitter: twitter.comelectrafilms
Hi Lilach – interesting debate. I do a mixture of scheduled tweets using HootSuite and live comments when I get a moment. Twitter can end up dominating your life, if you’re not careful and so I now time myself and I restrict my updates sessions to 10 min per time. Some days I only do one session on other days I do 2 or 3. I really like inspiring quotes as when I’m feeling a bit low reading something motivational really picks me up. I like to give back so I regularly tweet things that inspire me so that they can inspire others. I leave my tweets about my blog post to HootSuite.
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I think for people like me– I”m a full time teacher — I have to schedule tweets (I use buffer and hootsuite) or I’d be ignoring my students. If you want to encourage your audience but have another full time job, I think that it is important to schedule your Tweets (or for me, even Facebook updates) – I have a schedule of a certain number that go out per day. Then, when I have time, I jump in, respond, send dm’s and answer questions. If I tweeted all day and ignored my students but I”m encouraging good teaching and paying attention to the most important people in the classroom but spent all my time tweeting – I’d be the worst kind of hypocrite. When I see someone with a full time job like mine who tweets directly all the time, I wonder when they do their “real job.” Of course for social media types who just tweet all day, I guess they have time. I also think that one gets more done when one can enter a flow state and that doesn’t happen if you tweet once an hour.
Vicki Davis recently posted..Learning about Learning: Research and Edreform News and Views 05/20/2012
Twitter: coolcatteacher
Thanks for a great post! Having recently started following you I know you do engage personally!
Trying to ignore the ‘success’ of numbers is difficult. How many followers; how many retweets etc. Even how many tweets can become a ‘target’. I need to remind myself that talking and finding interesting content is the best reason to be on twitter
Twitter: moodybill
I always thought tweeting frequently is a spam and refrained tweeting and instead used to tweet 3 to 4 times a day. Effectively once each time i publish an article on our website. However, thanks for your tip we are now tweeting frequently and to my surprise my same community on twitter have been retweeting me more than before. That only confirms, the content i used to tweet before did not reach all my followers tweeting fewer times owing to the fact that they are on different timezones.
We didnt use any automated tools so far but we started with Stumbleupon schedule feature (su.pr) to schedule tweets. Will try the others you mentioned soon.
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Hello Lilach,
This is a great article!
I guess the answer lies in the industry you work in and who your audience is. Twitter is not a one-size-fit-all network. Usually, I advise people to not tweet more than 3 or 4 times an hour, to avoid problems. However, there are some days that this rule cannot apply.
As you said, it’s all about engaging and sharing great content!
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I don’t mean to completely discredit your article but I find this topic to be constantly over stated. At the end of the day, as with everything, it comes down to content. Provide an audience with valuable content and your Twitter will be successful.
Keith Z. recently posted..Typography Art: More Fab.com Stuff
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I’ve been tweeting under a number of accounts for a while. I found it really hard to maintain any kind of momentum. I go through binges. Now I’m using some productivity tricks to help me hit all my social sites, and I’m finding my new site launch to be going much more smoothly. I like having a mix of automated tweets (feeds from FB, Instagram, etc) and ‘live’ tweets.
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Twitter: LocalAndIndie
Its a really simple answer. Whenever you’ve got something interesting enough that you believe your community will be interested in.
Those boring tweets that nobody cares about – guess what? Nobody cares about them…well a few people might. Think about what you’re tweeting, when, to who and whats the benefit?
Thats the checklist everyone should be thinking about in their mind.
Twitter: BraveNewYork
Good morning! Great article. I am a newbie to Twitter. What I find as a newbie is I set out to attract a certain audience and ended up in a box. I know tweeting is about being social but social about what? Though I have found that tweeting too much people tend to unfollow and if I leave my profile alone for the day then all the sudden I have 10 followers. Very confusing.
Twitter: ScentNMore
I tweet when I feel I have something interesting, useful or amusing to say.
Some days that can mean as many as 10 tweets, whereas on other days, it may just the one tweet.
I don’t tend to tweet at the weekend. Mainly, because I try to remove technology from the loop at the weekends!
Twitter: TraceyDooley
In december I take I time.out with all social media, inclusie Twittet.
I went for a journey and did not want to know things of
Work. I told my followers do and sent a last tweet.
I am a 5 tweets or more a day tweeter
So I thought that in The time out that I lost followers but
In januari I had as mutch followers as BeforeDeparturewww
So not how Many tweets matter, but Wats inside..
If they follow you they do because of that
Twitter: AnjaStiel
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Hello all. This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about recently. I’m relatively new to the Social Media outside of personal use. I have been studying it for part of my degree along with CRM.
I have also started following prolific people within the Social Media field and in my opinion the major it of them tweet to much.
All these people are tweeting great content but the problem is that I have a busy life with my uni work and so I don’t always have time to read the content at the time its been posted. The trouble is If i spot something thats worth reading in the morning, by the time I have come back to it during my lunch break that person has tweeted several more times about different content.
There is no way I can keep up with the amount of content that Is being posted. I think that you need to spread your posts out and give people time to read them before posting more. So posting 5 times an hour I don’t think Is a good idea.
If nothing else all this strategy does it fill peoples twitter feeds and overloads them and for me that just puts be off reading anything because it would take me as long to find the relevant content to me, as it would to read the articles.
Thats my take on it.
Twitter: YOAFblog
I tweet on average 4 times a day. I respond to interesting news, retweet and have the occasional conversation. Building slowly and will be using hootsuite to maximise my presence!
Twitter: ankrahassociate