Twitter is one of the most popular - and addicting - micro-blogging platforms on the net, and many users eventually find themselves wondering how to automate tweets. Using Twitter can take up a lot of your time, so making use of tools that let you automate certain aspects of the service can make your twittering time much more efficient and effective.
Figuring Out How to Automate Tweets
Automating tweets and other activities on Twitter can widen your Twitter experience by allowing you to focus more on interacting with other members of the Twitter community, and spending less time working on managing your account. Automating your tweets allows you to write scheduled tweets all at once when you have time so that your followers still receive updates even when you're busy or away from your computer. Additionally, there are Twitter automation tools available that let you automatically post to Twitter from other sources like a blog or other social network.
Scheduling Your Tweets
There are a number of free applications that help you schedule your Twitter updates into the future. Anyone who has used Twitter for any length of time quickly realizes that keeping a steady stream of status updates going, and keeping your followers interested, can take a great deal of time and effort. However, if you take the time during one of you weekends to sit down and plan out your Twitter updates over the next few weeks or months, then it won't be necessary to constantly log into Twitter to post updates. Your scheduled updates will stream out exactly when you want them to. Out of all of the free applications on the web that can accomplish this task, the following ones are some of the best.
- Twittimer is probably one of the best Twitter schedulers. Not only can you schedule future updates, but you can also set up recurring Tweets - such as mentioning an anniversary or an event that takes place at regular intervals.
- Twuffer is another scheduler application, but Twuffer also lets you post-date tweets so that if you've forgotten to post about an event, you can still post an update about it after the fact.
- SocialOomph allows you to create a queue of tweets and scedule when to send them out. You can also track keywords, shorten links, purge tweets and use up to five Twitter accounts for free.
Using applications like these, you'll have far less difficulty keeping up with your Twitter updates, and much more time available to do other things that you need to do, like writing on your blog or getting your work done.
Automated Tweets from Other Places
Another method you can use to automate Twitter is to automatically post updates to Twitter whenever you publish information elsewhere, such as your blog, Facebook or even remotely from your phone. This is important because if you spend a lot of time blogging or updating your status on Facebook, by integrating Twitter with those activities you save the extra step of logging into Twitter and posting the same status update. By creating an automated link between Twitter and those other services you update often, you remove the worry that you'll forget to update Twitter, because the update takes place without any effort on your part.
- Dlvr.it is a very useful service that will convert updates to your blog's feed (or other sources you trust) into tweets for your Twitter account. This is a great way to promote your blog, and it also alerts your readers who are following you on Twitter that your blog has a new update. It also helps you curate helpful content to keep readers interested.
- Alex King provides free Twitter tools that allow you to both post your Tweets on your Wordpress blog and to tweet status updates about your new blog postings.
- Twitterrific is a neat iPhone application that provides you with the ability to read and post on Twitter with just your mobile phone. If you don't have an iPhone, don't forget that you can tweet with your regular phone by going into the "Settings" area in Twitter and setting up SMS updates. After you've set it up, you can send a text message to "40404" and the message will automatically post as a tweet.
These are only a small sampling of the many tools and services that are available online to integrate all of your online activities with Twitter. Properly configured, these services can make it possible to make your tweets so fully automated that you'll never have to remember to log into the Twitter website again.
Final Words
If you need to learn how to automate tweets, the list of resources above is the best place to start. Not only will you significantly cut down on the time it takes to manage your Twitter updates, but you could even completely eliminate that effort by fully automating your tweeting efforts.
