Scheduling social media activities
Despite relentless teasing by my friends from Invoke Media (who often ponder if I actually do use HootSuite), I actually am not only a frequent promoter of their Twitter client (HootSuite) but a frequent user too. At Social Media Camp Victoria 2010, Scott Stratten (UnMarketing) suggested that if you are strapped for time, you should schedule at least 30 minutes a day for social media activities. Sadly, I can’t really do that. So I decided this past weekend to use a few hours to write all the blog posts for the upcoming week, and schedule tweets that would promote my giveaways and posts. I think this actually works better. Admittedly, I can’t really spend much time every day because I do spend over 60% of my time now on academic activities, so 4 solid hours of social media helps me.
Do you pre-schedule blog posts and/or tweets? If so, how much time does it take you?
I’ll occasionally schedule blog posts – I don’t write enough to justify 3+ blog posts emerging on the same day. I don’t schedule tweets, and actually find it really annoying. Twitter is a dynamic medium supposedly characterized by real-time authenticity. Scheduled = non-real time and thus seem counter to the ‘value’ of twitter. Does 140 characters *really* take that much time?
As for needing to dedicate 30mins/day to publishing in social media, I think that’s true if it’s a part of your job. I’m an admittedly casual user (at least according to my Klout score) but don’t see anything wrong with that – my priority isn’t social media, but as an academic doing work in privacy, surveillance, and security: if a tool is demonstrably requiring me to ‘use’ it in a way defeating it’s authenticity (eg real-time authenticity) then that tool is too onerous to be used in a ‘professional’ way for me. Just my two cents, of course.
As a business users, it is hard to schedule tweets as news that are more than 8 hour late is considered as out-dated and gasp, irrelevant. I do schedule 30 minutes early in morning/afternoon and 30 minutes at anight for tweeting.
For blog posts and contests, scheduling is perfect! If the purpose is to get as many old reader & new readers to participate then you want to tweet at critical times when you have people’s attention but at those critical times you might be in meeting/having lunch/having a life then yes scheduling rules.
If I’m scheduling tweets for blog posts – it takes me 15 minutes to schedule for the week.
Hi ya Raul! Thanks for your hoot love! We’re very lucky to have you on team HootSuite. I really utilize HootSuite’s scheduling feature. I personally spend about an hour in the morning reading my Google Reader and scheduling tweets. Sometimes Twitter is overwhelming and can be a time suck! Schedule tweets allows me to spread out the tweets (not so spammy) and keep my followers happy with interesting content!
Hopefully see you soon!
Luv,
Kate
My blog would likely be better maintained if I were to schedule posts as I go through large stints of inactivity when the rest of life takes hold – I just don’t have the time anymore. Mind you, if I were to allocate less time to twitter.. then maybe..