Tuesday, May 31, 2011

How To Automate Your Twitter Persona, While Staying Personal

Tweet

When I first entered the world of Twitter, I was quickly overwhelmed. I had a specific goal in mind: to become regarded as an expert in the technology field. However, I couldn’t figure out how to stand out in the mass of tweets that are sent daily. I also found it quite amazing to see that people rather miss experiencing moments in life so that they could be the first to tweet about it. To give you a picture of what I’m talking about lets look into the exchange between two teenage girls in New York City:

Girl 1: (in disbelief): OMG! That’s Justin Bieber across the street!

Girl 2: NO WAY! Where’s my phone? (digs in her bag)

Girl 1: (a bit annoyed) What are you doing! Let’s go! (Girl 1 starts to head across the street)

Girl 2: I’m coming ! (finally gets phone and starts announcing to twitterland about this monumental event. After sending her tweet, she finally follows her friend across the street)

Girl 1: ...umm, you just missed him

Ignoring the fact that this dialogue referred to Justin Bieber, it was scenarios like make it look like Twitter required you to forgo your life in order to write about it. The other option was to leave your account to the twitter bots that send automated direct messages such as:

“Thanks for following! I promise not to sell you anything, really! Check my website! bit.ly/d9fke2kdie”

For some reason you actually click and, of course, they are selling you an e-book on how to get 4000+ twitter followers by following this one tip…

In any case, my goal was to become popular on Twitter without having to assigning a dedicated button on my Blackberry for the Twitter app. I found several tools that could help achieve that dream, as long as you use them judiciously:

Use services like dlvr.it to send tweets automatically. You can use the RSS feed of the blogs (especially your own) and news channels that you like as a source of tweets to your Twitter account. You can control the frequency and schedule of tweets sent with the service as well to avoid overwhelming your followers. I would recommending limiting these automated tweets to as few as four a day because you don’t have full control over what is being sent to your twitter feed. In addition, abusing these kind of services can make your account sound like a bot.

Schedule your tweets ahead of time. Use applications like TweetDeck and HootSuite to schedule your tweets the night before. What I love to do is check out the latest in technology on the web and write funny commentary on the links I share. I queue up about eight tweets to publish hourly the next day. The result is a twitter stream that is full of personal tweets that are sent without direct intervention, freeing you up for other tasks.

Keep track of and respond to mentions, retweets, and new followers. I personally like TweetDeck because on login it can notify you on all of the most recent interactions to your Twitter. This is really important to respond to the people that liked your contributions: your responses makes your automated tweets more personal because your followers know they will get an intelligent response.

The great thing about Twitter is that it is a tool whose use cases is still evolving. The automated tools are not inherently bad: but it is their abuse that gives them a bad reputation. Just look at GuyKawasaki.

<< Back to main