SAVE TIME BY SCHEDULING YOUR TWEETS
Tweeting live is always better if you can manage it, but we’re also real human beings and we need to eat, sleep and enjoy downtime with our loved ones because that’s what life is really all about!
One of the great things about Twitter marketing is that is really is possible to have a global vision and schedule your tweets to have a presence on Twitter even while you’re sleeping.
Statistics tell me that more than 55% of my followers are based in the US and less than 13% of people are following me here in Australia.
AMAZING!!
That means that when I’m ready to call it a day, my followers are eating breakfast.
I’ll admit that I have tried to stay up until 3am but it’s really quite hard to do consistently.
I have 3 favourites when it comes to scheduling my tweets ahead of time:
BUFFER
HOOTSUITE
GREMLN
Now, I want you to check out each for yourself and decide which one best suits your needs but I like Buffer for one reason:
I’m really REALLY hopeless when it comes to admin.
What Buffer does is that it allows you to hop into your account once, set all of the times you want to be tweeting, and then it just works in with whatever’s been programmed in.
All you need to do is copy/paste any links you want to tweet out.
That means that at this point in time, I’ve got about 6 months’ worth of tweets ready to go.
Now, it does cost about $10 per month but it’s well worth that cost for me because I do use all of the features and my followers are awake when I’m asleep.
It’s really important here that you find out where your followers are located and that you experiment with the times you’re posting.
Don’t be afraid!!
This will only help you to make sure the time you’re investing in Twitter is paying off as best it can.
Even though I do use these scheduling tools and it allows for automation, I do suggest you combine scheduling with live tweets.
There’s nothing like interacting with people in real-time but it’s fantastic to know you can put together a heap of timeless content and just schedule it in.
Oh, and it’s really fantastic for when you have your annual holiday!!
Next time, we chat about something that I get asked about a lot these days: Hashtags (#)
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www.KeithKeller.com.au
(Free Twitter Marketing eBook)
www.CrackTheTwitterCode.com
(Twitter Strategy Sessions – via Zoom)
THE COMPLETE 10 PART PODCAST SERIES
HOW TO SAVE TIME BY SCHEDULING YOUR TWEETS IN ADVANCE
((Download The Transcript Here))
Annemarie Cross: Now we’re back to a very special segment which we are running over 10 episodes.
Of course that’s a very special series for coaches and consultants who want to focus on how to promote themselves and their products using Twitter.
Welcome to another one of our very special series we are doing Keith!
Keith Keller: Oh you’re very welcome!
This is just so cool, we are on Part 5 now, we’re really rocking now!
AMC: We certainly are!
What are we talking about today?
KK: I wanna talk about scheduling, putting in place some automation that allows you to talk to a multitude of people all over the world when your market might not be in the town you live in.
AMC: Yes, just think about, the automation versus life because I know some people say:
“You shouldn’t be automating, you shouldn’t be scheduling”
but you know, you and I, both think quite differently.
Just share a little bit more about how you can integrate both in your business.
KK: Well, obviously, it’s preferable to tweet live, you’re real, you’re engaging.
But you’re also a human being, you need to sleep, to eat, look after your child and do exercises.
The most important thing, especially if you have a global vision, is that a lot of your followers and clients might be awake when you’re asleep.
And they may need information when you’re simply not there.
So, by scheduling your tweets, you’re spreading your information throughout the day so you’re trying to cover all bases.
55% of my followers live in the US, I have more followers in California than all Australia, more followers in New York than Melbourne.
So if I’ve only thought of Australian time in tweeting live, it’s about 87% of my followers, my potential clients, that I would just missed out of my information.
So, some very clever people over the last couple of years have devised these products, some of them free, some of them paid, where you can actually manage this, sensibly, and get that balance between being engaged but also living your life.
What do you thought on this Anne Marie because it’s very important that we have work-life balance isn’t it?
AMC: I think so, and you know one of the things that you mentioned and I think this maybe an AHA moment for people particularly if they’re busy tweeting away.
How do you know when this is actually away because they maybe tweeting at times where everybody else is in bed.
But you know in the last week’s episode Keith, you spoke about a couple of resources that show you who is following you and when they’re retweeting you.
Is that a tool that you can use to find out where people are located in the world or is there another tool that you gonna be sharing with us?
KK: There is an amazing tool, this is even the show nuts, this is a bit of a surprise.
This is possibly my favorite recent tool. It’s a site called tweepsmap.com.
Again completely free with an up-sell if you want to get more stats.
And it will tell you were your followers are. Now I can tell you categorically that13% of my followers are in Australia, 55% of my followers are in America, 7% are in Canada, 7% in the UK.
So, using that intel, if I know that 55% of my followers are in the US, I have to honor that, I have to speak to them. 7% are in Canada so that’s the same time zone.
7% are in the UK, I have to at least consider what that means to me because it’s a push site.
Just in case you’re not working on a global clock, it’s almost impossible to talk to London because it’s the flipside, I’m getting up they’re going to bed, I’m finishing my dinner, they’re just starting their breakfast. (AMC: yes for sure)
This is all part of the idea of starting using the analogy of me standing on the Empire state building, you know if you’re using this analogy in the social medias space you’ve got to start it, you’ve got to know if I tweet it at 7am, is anyone listening or should I give that up and go for a run and come back on Twitter at 9 o’clock?
Or should I just give up the morning and tweet after tea, after dinner?
Or should I get up a bit early and tweeting at 4am?
Once you know these stats you can make up your own mind!!
And there is an amazing site, I’ve been starting to use this recently again and at this state it’s completely free, it’s called tweriod.
I’m sorry that we’ve got all these techo language, but I’m chunking it down into 10 minutes sections so you can do this.
And what tweriod does is it tells you based on your stats what is the best time to tweet is for you!
So it measures maybe your last 1000 tweets or your last 1000 followers obviously if you just start that will probably pro-ratas them there.
And so based on your stats and your followers sheep and the many times you tweet, the best time to you to tweet is 7.00am on a Wednesday and the next best time is 8.15am every day.
So there you go!!
If I get up a bit early in the morning, because I’m not a morning person, I might get up and say
“Ok I’ll have my breakfast early and then a 7 o’clock I might spend an hour on Twitter and just chatting to all those people that are there”.
At 7 o’clock at that moment it’s 2pm in LA.
5pm in New York so that’s actually a pretty dynamic time.
Whereas if I wait a while after dinner, everyone in New York is in bed, people in LA start to get ready for bed.
AMC: Yeah, very important.
Once you realize that there are some certain times that you get your most retweets and people are sharing your stuff, yeah this is in the middle of the night for you so let’s talk about some of these tools that we can really leverage to automate some of these tweets.
KK: If you do decide, or the tools that you use say and it still happens to me for a very long time, the best time for me to tweet was about 2.55am”.
And I’m gonna tell you I did try staying up that long, I did try a few times!
But 3 o’clock in the morning I mean very few people in the world are awake at 3 o’clock in the morning and their time zone.
So I just have to resort that technology.
So these three sites I wanna talk about.
Myfavorite site is called Buffer and I will tell you about that in details, and there are two others variations, one called Hootsuite which most people have heard of and a complete variation called Gremln which is almost identical.
What Hootsuite and Gremln do is that they allow you to schedule tweets, to add a time, they may also have a dashboard that allows you to keep up-to-date with everyone is doing there.
Great sites, that have a variation on the free version, there are some free tools that you can use and then I think that for $10 a month you can get access to everything,
I actually love Buffer and I’ll tell you why I love it
Most of the time when I was scheduled with the other sites, you had to physically punch in:
8am Monday, 1pm-Monday (etc)
People would schedule out a day or half a day to do that tweets at a time.
And I’m not very good at admin!
I tried doing that but I just never got round of it.
But with Buffer, what it does it that allows you to tell Buffer one time
“I wanna tweet at 8am, I wanna tweet at 1pm, I wanna tweet at 4pm and I wanna tweet at 8pm”.
Most of my followers are in LA so let’s do that in LA time and then I’ll pick up few people in New York, in London, in Australia in the mix and then everytime you come across an article or you write a new blog you just simply cut and paste and put it in your Buffer.
It takes 10 seconds.
It just remembers, tomorrow at 8 o’clock, post another tweet for you.
And it gives you stats on who is retweeting you, how many followers they have so there is a bit of tweetreach calculated there, and it’s a very simple one-to-use! It costs 10$ a month, there is free version but it’s very limited, and I think, I’ve got my tweets going out probably for the next 6 weeks.
So in six weeks I have the time I know that I’ve got four tweets going out per day.
So Buffer is my favorite, what do you use?
AMC: I personally use Hootsuite.com and I’ve used that first for quite some time.
I am using the free version, I did upgrade and use the paid version and I think that was about 10$ a month as well.
But I didn’t use all of the facilities and the functions of course so I went back to free.
But what I do, I’ve got a VA, she’s got about 4 500 tweets that I keep “adding to” so she just select which one she wants to put up there and she’s scheduling that for me.
KK: This is actually picks up perfectly on the “10 to 1 rule”.
You’ve got 4000 tweets, you’ve been accumulating lots and lots of data, years years and years and lots of this stuff that we call Evergreen content it’s universally acceptable in May, March, February and December.
It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, this is still holds true.
So if you can pick 10 of those evergreen tweets and just add and sitting out in random land they go out throughout the day.
Once or twice a day you can jump and do a live tweet! Your ladies guide, your ladies adventures, your ladies show and you’re covering all bases, you’re tweeting live you’re putting in new material, but you’re also, and this is actually specifically the case for the coaching consultants speaker market because we have lots of information we are very passionate about which is evergreen (AMC: yes certainly it is).
These 4,000 (or so) tweets are relevant today as they were last year and will be next year.
AMC: Yeah absolutely. And I love the way that you’ve said you do a balance of each.
You know, be there live and also schedule so that you’re picking up on times that your audience may be there but you’re not necessarily going to be there or maybe you’ve got a speaking event that you’re going to attend or that you’re going to present at so you’re not able to be there.
You want to pre-schedule something.
And I think what’s really beneficial is the fact that you said and have done through all of the episodes that we’ve spoken on so far in the series, is that it so important to track and measure.
What’s working for you, what is the best time, we’ve got the tool now tweriod.com and of course all of that really allow us to identify what’s being shared, what’s being retweeted, what’s they are really enjoying and of course then tweeting those all in live or of course scheduling things them on some of those resources that you’ve shared.
So important, isn’t it?
KK: It’s brilliant!
As business owners we need to know the benefit of our actions.
It’s not just seeing what’s happen, you know, see what happens never works.
You’ve got to track it!
AMC: You certainly do yes.
Oh and I think at the very beginning when we’ve first started talking about this, both of us mentioned that there is some people who are like “oh no, get Twitter, it’s not working for me” well you’ve had a number of “AHA MOMENTS” across each of the episodes now and it’s clear there is some strategy behind this.
There is ongoing measurement, so you might realise “hey when I tweet this time a day, I get more interactions” so then if you find that out then you know it’s a really great time to continue sharing information on Twitter.
So it’s not just a “hey I’m gonna send more stuff out” so there really is a strategy behind this stuff.
So Keith, what will be talking about in the next week’s episode?
KK: I think it’s the most important thing about Twitter, what makes Twitter Twitter:
HASHTAGS.
So we’re gonna take you out how to use hashtags in Twitter in a sensible way and there’re three main ways to do that.
I’m gonna talk about how to use Twitter to get tractions, to get more reach, to measure what’s going on and to use it add to an event and to pick up on what is now being called “trending topics”.
Exciting times!!
AMC: Yeah exciting for sure!
So Thank you Keith once again and I cannot wait to learn more about hashtags!
KK: So see you next week!
AMC: See you then!!
TRANSCRIPTS & TRANSLATIONS BY SYLVIA LANDEZ
Sylvia is Keith’s French translator. She’s from Toulouse, in the south of France, but currently living “somewhere in New Zealand” for 10 months.
After a Master in Communication & Marketing, she realized that you don’t need to be brave or lucky to travel on your own; but just making the decision and doing it.
So she decided to live her dream:
Discover a new country, a new language and meet people from around the world.
Fascinated by the power of Social Media throughout her studies, she recognizes that she’s drawn her inspiration for her travels from experiences of other travelers shared online by blogs or Facebook / Twitter accounts, and this is the reason why she’s sharing her experience online as well.
Meeting Keith thanks to others’ connections and working with him was an amazing opportunity for her to learn more about the REAL Twitter, improve her skills in Social Media and also share her vision of using Twitter during her travel.