Start the planning process

Now that you're aware of the type of content and links that you can use in your tweets, you can move on to the planning of a schedule. The first step is to create a template that you can use over and over again.

Things to consider in your planning

1. How many tweets do you want to send out per day?
2. How many times should you repeat a tweet
3. What times of day do you want the tweets to go out?
4. How much 'old information will you use?
5. Do you need a weekly or a monthly schedule?

1. How many tweets/day

This is entirely up to you. I schedule between 8 and 15 every day (because I'm an experienced Twitter user) but there are no rules.

You have to do what suits you, depending on how bigger part Twitter is playing in your marketing strategy. However, your followers won't want to be receiving a tweet from you every 10 minutes!

2. How many times should you repeat a tweet?

If you're sending out a tweet you don't want to just send it once. What if people miss your first tweet, or the second or third time? I send nearly every scheduled tweet out at least 4 - 7 times in a week.

You will need to word the tweet in a different way or you could be accused of spamming by the Twitter authorities.

3. What times of day do you want the tweets to go out?

I send tweets out over a 24 hour basis because although I am based in the UK I have followers and connections in different times zones. If you're business is a local one, then you don't need to be sending tweets at 2am in the morning.

You need to think about the specific times of tweets:

• 7am - 8am is a good time for people travelling to work on public transport checking their tweets on their mobile phones.
• 12pm to 2pm is lunch hour for many people
• 5pm - 7pm - are people travelling home from work,
• 9pm onwards - people relaxing after their evening meal ....

Do not send tweets out that you have posed a question in if you are not going to be available to answer it.

4. How much 'past' information to use?

You will have lots of great content on your site already. You do not always have to offer new content.

Two thirds of my scheduled tweets contain links to (blogs, articles, videos, audio files ...) which are from a a fortnight or up to a year old. I offer a service and so if I write an article about 'motivation it will still be just as useful 6 months later. The other third are usually about events in the future.

I tweet my current articles and blogs etc that I have written on a daily basis as soon as they are written - until they become 'old'.

This can equally apply if you offer products - though obviously you need to be aware of updates and new releases if you're using past articles..

5. Do you need a weekly or monthly schedule?

A weekly schedule is quite enough for most people. Once you have set up a weekly template you can use it over and over again, just changing the information you send out.. Use an Excel spreadsheet, Word or a paper calendar.