Why You Shouldn't Schedule Your Tweets

I do both: I schedule quips and posts in advance, and then pop in and out of TweetDeck to add "real time" tweets. That way, if I can't plug in for a day (or more), I'm not worried.

Also, not everyone has to - or wants to - weigh in about major news events! I know what's going on in the world, but I don't necessarily want to spread news or add to the voices talking about it. Does that mean I shouldn't tweet while something major isn't happening, because it's "irrelevant"?

The scheduled tweets suit my mood and lifestyle, too. Sometimes I don't have the energy for Twitter, or I have too much work to do. Then, me and my scheduled T's are BFF's :-)

All good things,
Laurie

Quips & Tips for Money & Love

Quips & Tips for Giving Gifts ( http://bit.ly/iYav05 )

I think scheduled tweets are fine, but shouldn't be majority of one's tweet stream. I know of a couple, and their engagement is little. It seems like it is a pump of scheduled tweets, and... not so much.

I think people need to think. I like the ability to schedule tweets as part of a campaign, and I am forgetty-enough to forget I am responsible to do it.

On the other hand, I have only scheduled about 5 tweets ever. I didn't like not knowing what people were responding to. Like walking into a conversation I started, but didn't remeber I had started one :)

Jenny Ingram writes at Jenny On The Spot ( http://www.jennyonthespot.com ) and wears glitter everyday. She also digresses over there on the Twitter @jennyonthespot ( http://twitter.com/jennyonthespot ).

Ditto. I don't expect anyone to be plugged in 100% of the time. I also almost Facebooked something small and irrelevant after our softball game before I heard about Bin Laden--I could only hope that people would have extended some grace to me as well.

* La Buena Vida ( http://www.vivalabuenavida.blogspot.com ) *

I dislike scheduled tweets for the second reason you mentioned. They feel unauthentic to me. Social media is about real-time conversation, not about a carefully executed marketing plan. (Yes, even if you're a marketer).

----

Vered DeLeeuw

Blogger for Hire ( http://momgrind.com/hire-me/ ) and Social Media Consultant ( http://www.socialmediamarketingexpert.net/ )

Exactly. Blogging is social.

But if I didn't pull in my recent post to twitter, how would I gain new readers. Sure, I could rely on readers googling, but that's not really the purpose with my Chronicles blog, now is it. It's to get people who wouldn't read about adoption to read about adoption. And twitter is wonderful in that regard.

Family Section Editor Jenna Hatfield (@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom )) blogs at Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com ). She is a freelance writer and photographer.

I agree with Denise here.

My stuff auto pulls into my twitter feed. But I also have conversations about whatever happens to be going on with my life, with my followers' lives and so on. Do I see people who use twitter as an announcement-only type platform? Sure. I also see blogs that use their space in a vastly different way than I do. There's room for us all. Conversation will always happen, even amidst the announcements.

Family Section Editor Jenna Hatfield (@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom )) blogs at Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com ). She is a freelance writer and photographer.

I didn't even *know* tweets were scheduleable. D'oh!

Social media is interactive yes, but that doesn't mean that scheduled activity is necessarily bad. Blogging is part of social media. I schedule blog posts all the time. Why is it ok to schedule one and not the other?

BlogHer Book Club Host Karen Ballum also blogs at Sassymonkey ( http://sassymonkey.ca ) and Sassymonkey Reads ( http://sassymonkeyreads.ca ).

if conversation can be triggered from a pre-recorded for later sharing comment. I'd have to say yes, it can.

nellewrites ( http://nellewrites.wordpress.com/ )

I'm still trying to embrace Twitter. I want it to be interactive, like Facebook, but too often it's a bunch of disparate people tweeting stuff out into the echo chamber. I've almost walked away from it several times, but I've learned that maybe I need to be more patient to build up to that interactivity.

I don't pretend to know how others use Twitter, what need it fills for them. Perhaps I have some learning to do in that regard.

But based on what I think I know now, I just don't get scheduled tweets. They seem to fly in the face of connection and interactivity. They seem opportunistic and markety. And hey, maybe that's what they're meant to be - Twitter can be different things to different people, I suppose.

But social media, for me, is social - interactive, connective. Scheduled tweets are not either of those things.

( http://justlinda.net )JustLinda

fabulously imperfect

Twitter @JustLindaSTL

When I saw the title, that's what I thought this post was going to be about.

Scheduling tweets = announcement and not conversation.

And I agree except that I see a scheduled tweet as a type of RSS feed. As long as you still have conversation along with the scheduled tweets, I'm good.

:-)

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

I think it was fantastic that you posted that, and how well I remember the board thereafter, it is a vivid part of my 11 September memories.

Now why I feel that way... because 11 September is a demarcation line in our history, there is the before, and the after, at least to this date. Computers doing random coin tosses registered the effects. People around the world watched in horror (although some were happy, go figure.) Your post is the line, like looking down at the San Andreas fault line from an aeroplane. You, and all of us that frequented those boards expected it to be just another day, and just went about our lives.

Rather than an errant placement, it is a key part of our memories. I've a hunch that for many who were stunned by the bin Laden announcement and who happened to see random tweets not tied to the unfolding event, those random tweets also provide a line, a measuring tool locating the moment of awareness of a major occurrence in our world.

nellewrites ( http://nellewrites.wordpress.com/ )

You really don't want to know my opinion of scheduled tweets. And with that statement, I guess you do, now.

Twitter is about conversation, not regular announcements about me, me, me.

That being said, I'm also kind of sorry for people who never seem to leave Twitter. Have they no other life? It's equally sad if these people are really online 24/7/365 or if they schedule their comments so it just SEEMS as if they're online 24/7/365. I have a hard time taking such people seriously, no matter what they say.

"Don't be content with being average. Average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top."

Jane blogs as "Mamacita" at Scheiss Weekly, ( http://janegoodwin.net/ )hitting the fan like nobody can.

And though I know you mean well with this advice, well--Ouch.

As a Luddite when it comes to twitter, and a bred-in-the-bone uni-tasker, that could just as easily have been me with the unwitting foot-in-mouth (foot-in-tweet?) moment--which would have resulted from a scheduled blog post that auto-tweets. I didn't know about bin Laden until 4 am the next morning. If I'd had a post set up to post at 12:01 am on May 2, that would have been me.

~Margaret

Margaret Barney writes at Just Margaret ( http://maurhoffbarney.blogspot.com ) and is a contributor at Prime Parents Club ( http://www.primeparentsclub.com/ ).

You all have great points and each bring up views that I can totally respect.

Do you feel that scheduled tweets take the social out of social media at all? The engagement?

Kristen Doyle, Freelance Writer

Dine & Dish

www.dineanddish.net ( http://www.dineanddish.net )

Let me tell you a story... It was September 11, 2001. I woke up that morning and went to a message board I tended and I posted my pre-planned topic...

"Happy No News is Good News Day"

About ten minutes later, well you know what happened.

The world can change in the blink of an eye (is that a song lyric?) and while that was such a horrible topic on that day, I pulled the thread down... I almost wish I'd left it. Because it's true, and it would have been oh so true on that day.

News is so often bad and I do think it's important to embrace the good and the joyful - even in the midst of pain.

Sometimes, during crisis, it's ok and even important to have the every day world slip in to distract you. To remind you that you're alive and you care about Mother's Day cookies even though your heart is in your throat.

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

Personally, I was still trying to define within my own mind how exactly I felt about the death of Bin Laden and I didn't want to post in haste about it, but there were still things going on in my life that I DID want to post about, and although the author here may think it's insensitive, I feel that it's insensitive to think that all other life outside of the death of Bin Laden should come to a halt.

Don't get me wrong - I know the event was huge and it deserves attention. However, at that moment in time, I was anxiously awaiting a reunion with my childhood best friend who moved to Japan. I hadn't seen her in years and I posted about being excited for it. Was that insensitive of me? Should I have stifled my excitement? Was that moment undeserving of my attention because of something that happened in Pakistan?

I understand the idea behind this post, and in theory it makes sense. But when put to practice, you're still silencing a lot of goings on that, while may not be as monumental or deserve national or global attention are still worthy of being noted.

"...I'm not sure we can fault people for not being plugged in 100% of the time."

This.

While I understand the randomness of Mother's Day Cookies in a historical event, Jenna said it all with that one sentence.

Beth Anne blogs under a pen name at The Heir to Blair ( http://theheirtoblair.com ) where she dishes on motherhood & life in general.  She also delivers tidbits of awesome ( http://twitter.com/heirtoblair ) here.

Not everyone is constantly connected to the internet, or to media in general.
Once upon a time, before I had a smart phone, I used to sent tweets from my cell. I couldn't read them, so I didn't do it often, but I could send them. I'm sure they occasionally sounded out-of-place.
We normally turn the television off at the end of the day. It was just pure chance that we happened to catch the news.
I wouldn't look down at someone for an out-of-place tweet, and it never occurred to me that I should worry about someone doing the same to me.

Jen ThePsychobabble runs her mouth over at The Psycho Babble's ( http://thepsychobabble.net/ )@thepsychobabble
( http://twitter.com/thepsychobabble )

I have news alerts that feed to my business account and several followers that use my feed as a news source. I also have blogs that auto-post and I automate tweets for several clients based on their industry and relevant calendar items. I do that so that they and I can still conduct business but not be plugged in 24/7. I value my time away from the computer, TV, the phone and so on so that I can focus on my family. I almost missed the news that night as well because it was my birthday and we had all media off while we were celebrating. Some tweets probably went out that had nothing to do with the news. But it's okay. A lot of people didn't follow the news or hear it until later. A lot of people automate to supplement their real-time postings. And honestly (surprisingly to me but still true), there were quite a few people who didn't care about the news and continued about their lives and conversations without discussing it.

Debi, grinding through life at www.decafdiaries.com ( http://www.decafdiaries.com )
and paying the bills at www.brandnewconcept.com ( http://www.brandnewconcept.com )

I kind of agree.

But I make allowances for some stuff like that. As an example, my husband and I were watching a movie on Blu-Ray when everything happened. My computer was turned off. His computer was turned off. I thought about picking up my phone as we finished the movie to tweet about my thoughts on the movie, but just by chance, happened to turn on the TV to check the weather before we went to bed. It was then that I saw about the Bin Laden story. If I had tweeted about the movie, would you have judged me?

Yes, the Internet is a great tool at spreading information quickly. But I'm not sure we can fault people for not being plugged in 100% of the time. There's a chance that she had been writing that post with the TV off and twitter and Facebook closed so she could pay attention to the task at hand. If her blogging software tweets when she publishes, is she really at fault for single-tasking instead of multi-tasking?

It's a tricky line and I'm not really in the business of telling people how to utilize their own twitter streams.

Family Section Editor Jenna Hatfield (@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom )) blogs at Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com ). She is a freelance writer and photographer.