Sunshine Coast Web Design and Marketing

Should you automate your Twitter account,?

This can be be a controversial subject and there are all sorts of theories out there, but automating Twitter is not something I recommend. Certainly not for the way I use Twitter at least.

Let me state this very clearly I do not automate my Tweets, (I did toy with it for a very short time) but I will never do it again in the future.

The reason I don’t automate is because of my three core rules for using Twitter or any social media medium…

• Engage
• Interact
• Add Value

It is very hard to do these three things through automation in fact I consider it impossible!
Twitter is a real time communication tool so to use it effectively, people need to know that when your tweets are coming through it is actually you and not some Automatic Tweeting Machine.

The whole automation process isn’t I believe what Twitter was designed for, and pretty much nullifies the effectiveness of Twitter particularly for small business.

This post was supposed to wait for a few days while I finished writing my first series for a guest blog tour that I am currently undertaking. But the response to my first post (Twitter is about Quality) was so good that I brought it forward.

Now this is why I recommended the Tweeps that I did to you, have a look at their reactions, none of them knew that I was going to post about them and the way they use twitter.
And if they had an Automatic Tweeting Machine their tweeting wouldn’t be nearly as effective as it is.

These are the comments that I received very quickly I might add, three are locals to the Sunshine Coast and one from Victoria.
There response and willingness to interact and add value is the reason why they are in the small percentage of Twitter users that actually use Twitter effectively.

“Thanks for including me in your list Adam. I’m very flattered.

Looking forward to reading the rest of the series of your Twitter tips for business.

Have a fun and prosperous new year! Keep tweeting!” @kikirobinson

“Hello Adam. Thanks for the great list. I have enjoyed meeting local Sunshine Coast and Aussie people on Twitter and have connected with them more than anyone else which is cool.

It\’s probably that I don\’t do scheduled tweets so my times often meet with local people.

Thanks for the mention and have a great new year”!  @ecwebsites

“O sweet as! cheers man , looking forward to reading the series ” @jam3rr

“Thanks for including me in this list Adam. I love Twitter and I am amazed at the impact it has had on my business in such a short time.
I look forward to reading your upcoming posts about this topic. There seems to be a lot of confusing information out there. So, it will be great to have some solid guidance for business owners.
Thanks”!  @PpcMom

Do you think that they could create that sort of interaction with automation?
No way in hell!!!
I know what you are going to say next, you don’t have all day to sit there Twittering away.
I realize that as your are a small business owner who is exceptionally busy, time constraints are a huge problem.

Us online marketers like to preach to you that you should be using Twitter and other social media tools.
Who has the time to do that? I think because we spend so much time on the internet us web marketers tend to forget sometimes that there is another world offline, and not everyone spends all day online tapping away at a keyboard like us.

So the key for bricks and mortar business owner like yourself when it comes to twitter is be consistent, if you can only spare 20 minutes a day do it at the same time each day, so that your followers get to know when you are most likely to be online and they can actually interact with you.

I hope that this post has shed some light on the whole automation process, in the next few posts I am going to show you how you can leverage Twitter to actually save you time.

Yes that is written correctly Twitter can actually save you time!! I am going to show you the right way to use Twitter so that you are getting the maximum benefit from it.
This is a little hint… Does word of mouth advertising effect your business??

Profit and Enjoy
Cheers Adam Bean
@beanie72

For any questions about Twitter please leave a comment I do answer them all or feel free to call me on 0414502809

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 1:45 am and is filed under Twitter for Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.