Note: Although I refer to using automated techniques in this guide, by no means do we encourage you to spam on Twitter. Doing so will only subvert your own efforts. Automation is suggested as merely a way to increase the efficiency of certain repetitive tasks. Remember, Automation is against the ToS (Terms of Service) of Twitter, Use at your own risk.

If you don't wish to use any sort of automation, or simply don't want to risk your account, then feel free to skip over this section and move onto the next lesson. If you want to give it a read to just learn a bit about it feel free to do so as well.

I don't want to scare anyone off by this. It's just a very grey area. Some marketers will frown upon and avoid automation. Others embrace it with open arms.

There are some things that are 100% against the ToS, and other's that are allowed. I would suggest reading every single piece of Twitters ToS (There's 3 pages or so) before deciding if you want to use any sort of automaton.

I myself, do use automation (I have too, in such a huge business, I can't be on Twitter as much as I have to be) I encourage any serious marketer to do the same, However, this is your own personal preference. I can't tell you what to do. What I can do, is give you simple facts, that using automation will increase your results.

There are a great number of automation software out there. Some are "shady" and some actually have the Approval of Twitter. Do your own research and find one that suits your needs and over all goals.

Some of the top and known automation software: Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Buffer, Tweet Jukebox.

Like I said, there are countless programs out there. Don't get sucked into the hype of someone's pitch line and end up getting your account banned.

The biggest question is:

What Can Be Automated and What Needs to Be Personal?

Automation can be a dirty word when it comes to social media, because there is no bigger turn-off on Twitter than realizing an account is nothing but an automated bot. But there are some forms of automation that can be helpful to incorporate for both yourself (to save time) and for your followers.

There is one automation services I use that I usually get a great response from followers. Tweet Jukebox. This service allows you to connect your Twitter account and schedule tweets from a database that you create. You can set this database to send out a tweet every X hour/minute and also have the option to repeat after X days. There are no limits on how big the database can be, and you can have multiple databases.

I have around 16 different databases. Some with 5,000 tweets in each. I can schedule them however I want.

Now, the key here is, no matter what service you are using, to make sure you are doing it right. As a marketing aspect you don't want to spam your feed 24/7 with links or tweets.

Have a database set up for business tweets, have one set up for SEO, have one set up for niche research, then have one set up to blast your blog articles. It's also nice to have one to attrach new followers as well.

I could write a complete training just on Twitter Automation alone. This is just giving you some simple tips. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any specicifc questions.

Overall, I find Twitter Automation very important in my business, as I stated, I can't be there 24/7.. But knowing that I still have tweets being sent out is giving me traffic, new follows, new leads, even while I'm sleeping.