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5 Ways to Managing Your Time on Twitter

byDouglas Ian
April 29, 2014
3 minute read
Twitter Time Management
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There’s little doubt that Twitter ranks amongst the most powerful business tools in today’s modern-age digital web environment. Given the immense business potential of Twitter, it is easy for new businesses to be overwhelmed with the wealth of information and features available. Therefore, time management forms a critical aspect of the Twitter strategy for any business.

While being regarded as Twetoholics may sound cool for personal users, it may backfire for business users. If a business is spending too much time on Twitter or any other social platform, for that matter, and still not getting the desired results, it’s time for some serious retrospection. The decision to effectively manage your time on Twitter or any other social platform would be the best move toward a successful social media strategy. Here are 5 ways to managing your time on Twitter.

1) Have clear objectives

I’ve come across several business users who fear that they are getting way too much time on Twitter while achieving too little. In a majority of cases, I discover that businesses tend to join the Twitter bandwagon without having well-defined goals of what they’d like to achieve.

A number of businesses join Twitter simply because their competitors have done so and they don’t want to be left out in the race of techno-savvy businesses. If you don’t go in with a plan, you don’t come out with results – it’s as simple as that. Once you have clear objectives, it’s no rocket science to determine the optimal Twitter time that you need to spend to achieve those goals.

2) Create a schedule and stick to it

The most effective time management technique on Twitter is to create a well thought-out tweeting schedule and to stick to it. Adopt a realistic outlook in determining how much time can you spend on a daily basis and then stick to that plan with no exceptions. It’s a fine line between getting burnt out and not doing enough to keep your followers interested.

My Twitter habits include personally setting aside two half-hour slots (morning and evening) as my part of Tweeting schedule and it has worked well for me. My morning tweets address the audiences when they get to work and I’m able to reply to messages/ re-tweet messages during the day as part of my evening tweeting schedule.

3) Measure time spent vs. results achieved

Following a well-defined tweet plan is only half the battle won. The other and equally important half is to measure the success of your Twitter time. If you are not getting the desired results, it’s not worth the effort and you need to resort to a Plan-B.

So, how do you measure your Twitter success? While there is no clear metric to do, the following can help

* Increase in number of followers

* Increase in your business website traffic from Twitter

* Increase in opt-in leads generated from new traffic to your website

* Increase in number of direct message deeper connection

* Increase in number of Twitter profile views

Reflect on the time spent on Twitter and use your own judgment.

4) Accountability

Be accountable to yourself and your business. If you are not getting the desired results, don’t blame it on the tool. Spend time learning the intricacies and best practices on Twitter rather than jump starting your business promotions.

It’s easy to get burnt out by the tool and make decisions based on lack of self-accountability. It’s your time, your business so how can any one else be accountable for it?

5) Tools

There are several tools which help you efficiently manage your Twitter time. I’m a big fan of Buffer, HootSuite, smqueue and Viralheat as they are all simple to use and add value to my business. Some of these tools provide important analytical information that helps me take important decisions to alter my Twitter schedule as required.

Of course, these are just four of the several thousands of value-added tools available for Twitter.

What are the tips your business follows for an effective Twitter time management schedule? How much time do you spend on Twitter on a daily basis and why? Please share your experience by leaving a comment below this post.

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Douglas Ian
Douglas Ian is the Chief Editor of Smedio Magazine, Bestselling Author, Strategist, Speaker, and Trainer, who helps businesses grow their revenue through specialized business optimization strategies.
79 comments

    1. According to Twitter’s terms and conditions, it isn’t allowed to use tools that determine who viewed your profile yet. Your strategy is to increase your twitter page views, not restricted to your feed view, but including your profile view. The best way to improve your profile view is to be a source of relevant and useful tweets.

      Thanks for the comment Tran.

  2. Sticking to a plan, that’s the best suggestion anyone could ever give.
    My plan starts with my blog, and uses Twitter as a channel to focus content from and to the blog itself.
    Of course I have conversations on Twitter, and ones that I really value, using it also as a medium to promote content I find valuable around the blogs I follow and encouraging sharing of ideas around them with my Followers.
    I guess though, I really should work harder on a finding a more “defined” schedule for my activities 😉

    1. Without a schedule, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by Twitter. Yes, you get out of Twitter what you put into it but a strategic schedule is what will give you that sanitized result.

      Always great to have you on Smedio, Gabriele.

  3. I’ve been willy nilly with Twitter for 3 years or more. I haven’t really looked at it strategically. I’ve looked at it like the phone. I think you’ve given a good plan here. It’s not how I’m doing it, but it’s definitely a way to do it SMARTER than me.

    Great post.

  4. I think another good idea is to have a great app when using Twitter. I don’t think we have ever used Twitter itself to manage a client’s account or our own. The new Twitter is a little bit better, but we can’t get off Hootsuite.

    I also like to think that it’s more about quality than quantity. Although I do feel that managing a certain amount of time is a great idea, it is equally important to spend time listening to other people. This way you can interact much more in the Twitter community which, at the end of the day, is the most effective from our experience.

    Adam Chamberlain
    http://www.prioritypr.net

  6. I like the half-hour twice-a-day schedule as well. I use Tweetdeck to manage a private, business and 2 volunteer organisations’ accounts and it’s easy to get carried away reading links and concentrating one one account over the others.

    1. You’re right on Carole. Without a plan schedule on Twitter, it’s very easy to be misdirected by the miriad of links often leading to great information but you must be disciplined with your ‘Twitter Time’.

      Thanks for the comment.

  8. I’ve been using Twitter religiously for the last two years and I haven’t really put any schedule behind it, but up until recently considered it only because you can’t tell clients to go gung-ho!

    There are a lot of businesses using these tools and jump off because they expect ‘fast results’. It’s tough to make an argument that it takes time, but time is scarce and knowing how you spend your time and where it’s more valuable is important; to that end I follow the 80/20 rule. Here is what I would add to your tips 🙂

    There are few things that are easy to know:

    – Day(s) of the week that people are most active on Twitter.
    – Time of day that is most active and therefore better to filter strategic info about your business (blog posts)
    -Days and time when you’re most passionate followers are active.

    Though this is more focused and seems narrow the point is to get active, have an understanding of how things flow and get the ball rolling. After this it’s going to get tough to get off the ship but by now you’ll have a deep understanding of how and when you spent the best time. After this is when I think your tips come in handy as it’s time to evaluate.

    Thoughts?

    Cheers,

    Jorge

    1. You’re right on Jorge. Optimization is important, when it comes to effective campaigns, be it on Twitter or online in general. An effective Twitter user should foremost determine her market segment, the next step should be to determine the most productive day and time to engage that market segment.

      Always a pleasure to read your insightful comments. Thanks Jorge.

  9. I follow your schedule for my personal twitter (and some of my work twitter) more by good luck than good management. Half an hour happens to be the length of the bus trip to and from work!

  10. I manage my time on Twitter and other social media by optimizing my time. Using a program like TweetDeck, Ping or HootSuite helps you track your followers’ tweets, you own, your competition, and lets you find out who’s not happy with your competition. You can also send tweets out to other social media, thus only making one post at a time for all – a true time-saver.

  11. I spend approx. 4-5 hours per day on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, as part of my service to my clients and I do log the amount of time spent on each account. I appreciate the measurements suggestions you have made this is a great way to report back to my customer as well. Thanks

  12. I’m a big believer you can measure anything (even Twitter) — whether you have the dollars or the time to do it is another thing. But why you use a certain medium (web, tv, radio) will have a direct correlation to what you measure. So I agree with you…have a reason and a plan on why you use Twitter.

  13. These are definitely some of the keys to improving the effectiveness of an organization’s time spent on Twitter. Having a strategic plan is so important to understanding what you want to get out of your Twitter presence, how you are going to accomplish this, and as you mention Douglas, how to measure these results!

    One that I might add is to continue to follow blogs and posts like this one that will help an organization or individual gain a greater understanding of Twitter and the possibilities available!

    Cheers,
    Tyrell Mara

  14. Oh I sooo need to apply a bit of this stuff,

    but at the same time I like the organicness of popping in and out of twitter.

    I see it as like a 24 hour party where your always welcome.

  15. Totally agree on setting a schedule – and sticking to it! It’s all too easy to get caught up in a Twitter watch, where you sit waiting for the next @mention or DM. Before you know it, half a day has passed of very unproductive time!

    The measurements you have listed are a great benchmark to testing if you’re using your Twitter time wisely. Will be applying them to my own activity!

    Thanks for another great post.

    Liz Melville

  16. What a great post – many thanks! When I first started using Twitter I spent hours on it and felt it took over my life!! I’ve probably got it down to about an hour a day now, in chunks, for my personal use, but its easy to get carried away, especially with links to so many fantastic posts, such as this one, to read! Great advice on the metrics too – thanks!

  18. You make some excellent posts here Douglas. As an offline entrepreneur for the last 21 years, I have re-focused my efforts online because my business (all businesses for that matter) is far more scalable online and with Social Media, specifically Twitter, what used to cost me a tremendous amount in advertising, the cost is in the time I spend now compared to the dollars I spent before but, as they say time is money so it becomes a bit tricky. I appreciate your philosophy and practicality of using Twitter in the morning and at night. I also find it good at those time because I can reach both my EST, and Central Time people as well as my overseas people in the morning and my West Coast people at night.

    I don’t see Facebook conversion from a commercial standpoint but that’s just me (I tried it for my Foundation) but I do see tremendous power in Twitter. To me, it is also the opposite of FB as Twitter is 100% private as far as your ability to re-circulate information to your followers. For example, friends I had accepted on FB or on my Foundation fan page would say some things I didn’t approve of and I couldn’t control it other then to block them in the future after the damage was already done.

    Thanx again 4 your continued relevance in the market and enjoy what’s left of the weekend.

  19. I use 2 tools, other than Hootsuite, for posting.  1 is SocialBro (I use the Chrome plugin) that mines my followers to determine the best time to tweet.  I run it weekly.  This data I then use to setup Bufferapp which will buffer my tweets so that they don’t all come down the stream at once.  Bufferapp has a nice Chrome plugin, so when I’m on a website I want to share I just hit the button and it buffers the link for publishing later.

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  64. Hey Douglas, Awesome post. Having clear defined objectives for social media is definitely an area that businesses forget! SocialBro is also another great to manage your time on Twitter. It works with Buffer and HootSuite to improve your tweeting schedule too! 🙂

  65. Hey Douglas, Awesome post. Having clear defined objectives for social media is definitely an area that businesses forget! SocialBro is also another great to manage your time on Twitter. It works with Buffer and HootSuite to improve your tweeting schedule too! 🙂

  66. Hey Douglas, Awesome post. Having clear defined objectives for social media is definitely an area that businesses forget! SocialBro is also another great to manage your time on Twitter. It works with Buffer and HootSuite to improve your tweeting schedule too! 🙂

  67. Hey Douglas, Awesome post. Having clear defined objectives for social media is definitely an area that businesses forget! SocialBro is also another great to manage your time on Twitter. It works with Buffer and HootSuite to improve your tweeting schedule too! 🙂

  68. Hey Douglas, Awesome post. Having clear defined objectives for social media is definitely an area that businesses forget! SocialBro is also another great to manage your time on Twitter. It works with Buffer and HootSuite to improve your tweeting schedule too! 🙂

  69. Hey Douglas, Awesome post. Having clear defined objectives for social media is definitely an area that businesses forget! SocialBro is also another great to manage your time on Twitter. It works with Buffer and HootSuite to improve your tweeting schedule too! 🙂

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