Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

Is it worthwhile to repeat yourself?

Most folks who have a blog and use Twitter will send a tweet that links to a new blog post (either manually or through an automated means). That’ll drive traffic, but how many of your Twitter followers will see it?

Hint: not all of them. Probably not even a majority of them. If someone is following more than a few people on Twitter, they’re not reading everything. Twitter users drift in and out of the stream of tweets, catching whatever happens to flow by while they watch. If you’re tweeting while someone happens to be away, your tweet probably isn’t being seen.

One way to help your tweet reach more viewers is to repeat the tweet. One option is an automated tweet scheduling service such as that offered by FutureTweets or SocialOomph.

Another method (and the one which I use) is to manually post a tweet at a later point, referencing the post which someone might have missed. For example, see this tweet which was the automated tweet when my post-SXSW thoughts went live, and then I manually posted a follow-up tweet later that evening to catch a crowd that might not have seen the original one.

You don’t want to overdo it and post too many times… after all, the folks that are paying close attention don’t want to see you advertise the same post over and over and over, but I’d argue that tweeting a link 2-3 times is completely appropriate.

And so I ask… is it worthwhile to repeat yourself?

Photo by wonderferret, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
blogging,
promotion,
self-promotion,
tweets,
Twitter

For several years, savvy bloggers have used the scheduling features of blog software to write posts in advance and have them published in the future (see How to Schedule Blog Posts). What about tweets? Should you schedule those as well?

Should You Schedule Tweets?

While scheduling blog posts is universally seen as a good practice, there is a bit of disagreement amongst some social media users about the practice of scheduling tweets. The mechanics are similar (write a tweet and schedule it for later – see below for specifics) but some feel that Twitter is more personal and more conversational; some feel that scheduling a future tweet removes the personal angle and isn’t genuine.

On the other hand, since Twitter is a transitory medium, if someone doesn’t happen to see your tweet because they’re not online when you post it, they probably won’t see it at all. A couple months ago I asked the question if it made sense to post blog links multiple times on Twitter and talked about how posting a link a few times makes sense to reach different Twitter audiences depending on the time of day (or even the day of the week). If we’re going to tweet something for a certain time, doesn’t it make sense to use a service to automate that tweet?

I think that using scheduled tweets as one part of your social marketing toolbox makes sense. I still post nearly all of my tweets manually, but I’ve started using a scheduler to tweets links for things at times of day when I might not be close to my computer (or I might forget). As long as you don’t start relying on scheduled tweets as your main method of tweeting, readers should find the tweets useful and not overwhelming.

How to Schedule Tweets

My favorite way to schedule tweets is with the scheduler now available in the new version of TweetDeck. It’s darned simple. Just type out your tweet, but instead of clicking on the “Send” button, click on the button with a small clock icon:

Enter the time to send the tweet, and click “Set Time.” That’s it. At the given hour, your tweet will be posted just as if you’d done it manually via TweetDeck.

I do want to note that a few folks have reported issues with the new scheduling feature of TweetDeck… it has worked fine for me and I’m not sure if the problems are very widespread but at least one Social Photo Talk reader has expressed concerns.

Don’t use TweetDeck? I know that HootSuite offers this same functionality, and there’s a standalone scheduled tweet service called Twuffer.

Do you Schedule? What Do You Think?

What’s your take on this? Do you schedule tweets? Think it’s a good idea? Think it’s too impersonal?

Photo by ericskiff, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
marketing,
scheduled tweets,
social media,
tweets,
Twitter