There is still debate out there in the social media management world about the use of Twitter management tools to schedule your tweets. I believe you should. In this article, I’ll explain why, and give you a few scheduling software platform options to use. As a manager of social media, you need to keep up with your Twitter engagement. You also likely have blog posts, Facebook updates, newsletters, regular emails, inbound marketing, SEO analysis, and other social media channels through which you interact and develop relations with customers, to generate new and better leads for your company. These tasks need to be kept up daily, weekly and monthly – all likely in the form of nice looking reports. To manage your busy days, I am an advocate that you need to create a schedule. Believe me, I’ve been there. This includes a schedule for your Tweets.Let’s first take a look at the average lifespan of a tweet. According to recent studies, such as by seomoz.org, the average lifespan of a tweet is 18 minutes. If your tweet is retweeted, that lifespan is a little longer. Most RT’s happen in the first 7 minutes. So, how often should you tweet? This varies. You need to assess your goals, and the purposes of your tweets. You need to take a look at what you are tweeting, how you are engaging your market, and how successful you are at reaching the masses of your niche. You will likely be posting a tweet more than 6 times in a day. Likely more if you are reaching a global market, with varying time zones. If you are not scheduling your tweets, this could mean waking up at 2am to post to your European customers, and every few hours thereafter. Making a schedule for when you tweet and what you will tweet will make your life easier. Having a plan will also make you a better tweeter – as you can develop themes and keep consistency with your messaging. You can be more precise with A/B testing too, based on what gets retweeted and when. You can make your own scheduling system, such as through a spreadsheet. Or… use an API to schedule your tweets to make your social media marketing life a little easier. Yes, for some reason there are those out there gritting their teeth at this suggestion, but scheduling your tweets can make your crazy days as a social marketer a little more manageable. Just make sure you are still regularly checking your Twitter timeline, and if current events impact what you’ve scheduled to tweet – change them! Here is a short list of great scheduling software tools through which you can organize your Tweets: Buffer (now integrated into Twitter) TweetDeck HootSuite 14 blocks Tweetsqueue SocialFlow Buffer on Twitter: Additionally, most of these tools have analytics to help to determine when, how often and what to tweet about. Hootsuite, for example, can analyze your tweets and schedule your posts at the highest traffic times. Check out Wishpond’s Twitter Campaigns to boost your ROI from Twitter using contests and promotions.

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