I’m writing these words on my Blackberry, in the Notes application. This note is called “automated tweets.” It has a neighbor with a name that’s extremely apropos. The neighbor’s name is “2 tweet Monday.”
Why would I have a note that lists things I’m going to tweet in the future? Well, Blackberry Twitter scheduling applications don’t work very well. But why save those tweets for the future in the first place? Why not just send them now?
Welcome to the somewhat wonderful, vaguely controversial, unintentionally hilarious and occasionally awful world of scheduled tweets.
I’ve written about scheduled tweets, usually poking fun at people who schedule badly (The Robots Come Out At Night and Is your organization’s social media run by a Scrooge?) Recently I started to wonder what some of the well-known marketing and social media professionals think about scheduled tweets. With the exception of Scott “Real Time” Stratten, I really had no idea. So I asked. Via direct message, I said,
“Scheduled tweets: good or evil?”
What was surprising wasn’t so much the answers, but that I largely misjudged who schedules and who doesn’t (showing that those who schedule do it well.)
Not exactly a controversy
Of the people I queried, only one has a strong objection to scheduled tweets. Scott Stratten — known on Twitter as @unmarketing — hates them. In his February, 2010 blog post Mannequin Networking: Why Twitter Automation is Bad, he lays out his reasons, concluding that automated tweeting of any kind, including scheduled tweets, is ultimately ineffective and could even be harmful to the tweeter’s reputation. When I contacted Scott for a fresh quote about the subject, it was obvious that he hasn’t changed his mind. He says,
“Scheduling or automating tweets is like sending a mannequin to a networking event. Sure it’s “there” but you aren’t, and you can’t reply in real time if you’re not there within 5 minutes of the tweet and that’s when most responses will occur. Don’t try to have presence without being present. And really, it’s 140 characters, how long does that take?”
The only other non-scheduler I contacted has a completely different take on the practice. Hugh Briss (@hughbriss of Social Identities) was surprised that this topics is discussed at all. He says,
“I don’t really see how scheduled tweets would be a problem for anyone, and although I don’t do it myself, unless someone used them in a really stupid way like scheduling Tweets that by the time they were posted were out of context or outdated, I can’t imagine why anyone would care.”
Opinions from people who regularly schedule tweets
Shashi Bellamkonda (@shashib), director of social media for Network Solutions, uses scheduled tweets with caution. He says,
“Only in some cases scheduled tweets may be ok; for example, I usually look at my rss feeds for news and interesting articles early in the morning. [In the past] my followers would have seen a few continuous tweets about interesting articles. Now I try to spread them throughout the day so more people have a chance to see the articles. Hootsuite and a tool called Timely.is are some tools that help you spread the tweets. Scheduled tweets should form only a small part of your conversations.”
Marketing consultant and author Jay Baer (@jaybaer) also uses Twitter to share a variety of information with followers. He says,
“I use Twitter mostly as a curation mechanism, directing my followers to resources and information that I believe they’ll find useful.
“What I often do (especially when traveling) is to find several interesting things in the morning, and then release them throughout the day. This presents me from having to dive in and out of Twitter many times per day, which can be distracting and a time suck.”
Jay also tweets links to his blog posts throughout each day and evening (though not, from what I can see, overnight.) I asked him if he had ever scheduled a reply so that it would appear the next business day, rather than late in the evening or early in the morning. He replied, “I have never scheduled a reply. I don’t have a religious objection to it, I just don’t love the concept.”
Arnie Kuenn (@ArnieK) CEO of Vertical Measures, is in the position of managing not only his own Twitter stream, but those of his clients. He replied,
“Good question re scheduled Tweets. Since I am a marketer and Vertical Measures is a marketing company, we use scheduled tweets all the time. We promote a lot of content using social media and have no problem with using scheduling tools. Not just for ourselves, but we do social media for our clients too, and some of them are as far away as Australia, so we have to schedule tweets for the appropriate time zones. I know there is a philosophy that you should be there to respond to tweets you just sent, but that is just not always going to work.”
Erika Napoletano (@redheadwriting of RedHead Writing also tweets for clients as well as for herself. She writes,
“I personally have no problem with scheduled tweets and use them frequently for both my account and those of our clients. Why? You don’t want to bomb your followers’; streams and there’s lots of great, topical information to share. Scheduling throughout the day can help establish you as a reliable source for timely information and allow you to focus on the part of Twitter that’s the most valuable: the interaction.”
Since Erika talks to her followers all the time, I wondered if she ever scheduled replies. Her response? “Nah, I just hit “reply.”
Adam Kleinberg, (@adamkleinberg) CEO of Traction, was the only respondent to address the subject of retweeting. He says,
“Purists might say that scheduled tweets are evil, but often it’s just good marketing. Here’s reality. The average Twitter user has 126 followers (that’s from 2009, but close enough). Once you follow more than about 100 people on Twitter, it becomes extremely hard to actually digest most of what’s in your feed. In short, most of your tweets do not get read by your followers. Scheduled tweets can allow you to make sure your tweets go out when people are most likely to read and retweet them [according to this article by Dan Zarrella]. It’s just smart.”
When automation goes bad
Adam went on to discuss scheduled-tweets’ ugly step-sisters, auto-responses:
“Auto-response tweets are completely evil, however. People expect authenticity. Robots are not authentic. They are creepy and fake. Cut it out. Yuck.”
I agree with Adam about auto-response tweets! Furthermore, auto-responses aren’t the only Twitter automation that can backfire. Having an automated service decide the timing of your tweets is also a bad idea. “Tell me how I can help you!” may hit the local newsfeeds at 2am. You do NOT want to read those responses.
Does a scheduled tweet really mean an absent poster?
Maybe not. It could be the mark of an absent-minded poster. People may schedule tweets about interesting articles or reminders about upcoming events so that they don’t forget to send them, and they very well could be using their computers or phones when those tweets appear.
Does a “live” tweet ensure a prompt response to replies and retweets?
An argument against scheduling services is that the scheduler isn’t available to respond to replies and thank others for retweets. But this can happen when you send a tweet live while sitting in your office, at your computer. Example: You tweet something at 10am. Then a client calls unexpectedly. You spend some time talking to her, and then some more time working on her project. You’re in the office, at your computer, but you don’t look at Twitter until noon. The effect is the same as if you had scheduled the tweet for 10am because you were going to spend the morning in a meeting.
So after all this, does Angelique schedule tweets?
I’m thinking I should start again. I used to. I do like the idea of sharing a variety of things, including pitches for my own classes, at regular intervals and at times that my followers are likely to read them. However, preparing a stream of scheduled tweets requires its own block of time, and I have to figure out how to add that to my day.
Moreover, should I get inspired to start a regular program of tweet-scheduling, I don’t think I’ll be scheduling conversational or complimentary or congratulatory tweets when I can’t respond, because I do like to have real-time conversations on Twitter. Yeah, there’s no guarantee that the people to and about whom I’m tweeting will be around, but there’s a chance.
A big thank you to all the people I interviewed! And to my A2SM readers, what do YOU think? Please comment!
