The Twitter feed moves fast! For a newbie it may seem daunting. When I first started out, I was always wondering how in the world anyone managed to check any tweet at all. Now, however, I love it.

Although I use Twitter solely for networking and promoting my books and websites, when I have some free time, I sometimes scroll down the news feed and check out tweets. I do, however, limit it to less than 15 minutes. Social media are useful but don’t let them take up all your time.

Since the Twitter feed moves so rapidly, your tweet will quickly disappear in the maelstrom of information that is being tweeted every second; so in general, your tweet has a lifespan of about 18 minutes.

This means that – in theory – you should tweet or retweet every 18 minutes, which is difficult to do. Now that we are staying home, I make a point of it to retweet my newest book every half hour or whenever I remember (If I am writing a book or a blog post, I don’t do that. Then I am too focused on my writing, and social media should not distract you all day long, right?)

If you are serious, though, about regularly promoting content on Twitter, I recommend that you tweet every half hour, or start doing it every hour. Some companies even have assigned staff that focuses on Twitter all day long, tweeting at timed intervals.

You can, of course, use an online service to time your tweets, so that you don’t have to remember doing it, and that works great too, but I don’t do that. It’s really up to you, though. Just remember that there are people on Twitter, and many of them want to engage. Someone who is mindlessly bombarding them with advertisements but never even says hi or replies to a tweet will get easily ignored.

I mix things up. I engage with my followers. I answer polls, answer questions, give advice when it’s asked, or I ask for advice as well when I have a doubt. In between all that I share my book links and my blog posts.

By keeping that mix and actually talking to my followers, they can see that I am real, I am a human sitting behind a computer, and they will be more open to seeing my work. When you have established a good relationship with them or with a group of people, they will also happily retweet your tweets, thus giving you more exposure.

I got some organic website comments from people I regularly engage with on Twitter.