Yesterday I did a little Twitter experiment. You should know that I am not a fan of auto posting to a twitter account. That said I figure I try something to see if you could post tweets for 24 hours without anyone caring or unfollowed.
I use Hootsuite (paid account) they have this cool bulk upload feature which allows you to upload a csv file with up to 50 tweets at a time. You can set the times and schedule the tweets out as long as they are 5 minutes apart from each other. I decided to use this and interact with my readers for almost 24 hours straight. I did this using my NASCAR twitter account since it has the most scattered fans throughout the country. @awesomeracefans
I started the experiment at midnight and had the tweets scheduled for every half hour or so – a total of 48 tweets. A few of the tweets were generic things like what is your favorite NASCAR track etc, Some tweets were shout outs to our Facebook fan page encouraging “Likes” and also to our newsletter sign up page.
The tweets started at midnight and since I was still awake until around 2:30am I could actually interact with people on the west coast that were retweeting the messages or responding to the questions. I figured the middle of the night would be dead so I wasn't expecting any interaction. These are when I had the account send tweets like “Cant wait until Nascar starts again” and some tweets out to our NASCAR shopping section. Basic stuff where I didn't have to do a direct response and wouldn't expect any interaction.
When the sun started to come out on the east coast I put some of my tweets into a question form. This way when I woke up I would have some tweets to interact with. Asking people what their favorite NASCAR movie is and what is their home track etc. Just some basic questions that any NASCAR fan would have an opinion on. Nothing too controversial just some casual questions which I expected some responses too.
When I got up I started to reply to some of the responses left and picked up right along as if I never slept. Over the course of the night I had a few people sign up for the newsletter, a few likes on Facebook and a few responses.
I answered the responses and kept on tweeting every half hour and had over 40 interactions with people. All positive and I learned some things about my followers.
Results:
Sold two items from the NASCAR store, my contextual ad revenue went up 20%, Got a few newsletter sign ups, a few Facebook likes, a few more Twitter followers.
Was it worth it, I am not sure yet. It did take me 15 to 20 minutes to set up, another 15 to think of questions. The jury is still out for me, might try it again on another account and see what results it brings.
Vegan Pimp says
Excellent information!! Thanks for doing the research to find out how, implementing and reporting back to us with the outcome. Curious how this works as a steady thing. I always wonder if so many tweets could be obnoxious. Although I guess if they’re meaningful and engaging then that’s a good thing. Awesome! Thanks Vinny!! You are nothing short of fantabulous!
wgmoore says
Great idea…..except my responses too late…lol. One of the questions you asked was on a NASCAR Fan Council survey this month. It was the question about who our favorite NASCAR broadcast team was. Keep the questions coming….
Vinny says
WGMoore
I was still getting comments from these post until about noon today so you were not the latest comments ๐
Liz Gazer says
Hi Vinny! Great post. I’d like to know how auto-tweeting long term would affect a “brand” or a “name” on platforms like Twitter. In your short term experiment, it worked to your advantage it sounds like but I tend to think it might get a bit impersonal after a time and lose some immediate relevancy that make SM platforms so effective (“in the moment” topics etc.). But, like VeganPimp said, if they remain engaging then it seems like a huge time saver where you could set aside that 30-45 or even 1 or more hours a day and still not have it take OVER your day. Then again that’s ‘just’ one Twitter account and with most people having multiple accounts for various purposes, keeping up with the prep for automation could still be a full time job or close to it. Looking forward to more info on this. ๐ Keep us posted on how things go if you continue!
Gail Gardner says
What you did is similar to what I suggested in my post about using Twitterfeed to create a consistent presence on Twitter. The tips in both posts can also work in Hootsuite, CoTweet or any other application that allows you to schedule tweets.
I believe we’ll all find that some automating is very useful as long as we don’t replace live interaction. Your experiment sounds like a great success because it increased your interactions and didn’t take anything away from your followers.
Marisol Perry says
Hi Vinny! Great post. I’d like to know how auto-tweeting long term would affect a “brand” or a “name” on platforms like Twitter. In your short term experiment, it worked to your advantage it sounds like but I tend to think it might get a bit impersonal after a time and lose some immediate relevancy that make SM platforms so effective (“in the moment” topics etc.). But, like VeganPimp said, if they remain engaging then it seems like a huge time saver where you could set aside that 30-45 or even 1 or more hours a day and still not have it take OVER your day. Then again that’s ‘just’ one Twitter account and with most people having multiple accounts for various purposes, keeping up with the prep for automation could still be a full time job or close to it. Looking forward to more info on this. ๐ Keep us posted on how things go if you continue!
Latoya Bridges says
What you did is similar to what I suggested in my post about using Twitterfeed to create a consistent presence on Twitter. The tips in both posts can also work in Hootsuite, CoTweet or any other application that allows you to schedule tweets. I believe we’ll all find that some automating is very useful as long as we don’t replace live interaction. Your experiment sounds like a great success because it increased your interactions and didn’t take anything away from your followers.
Vinny says
Marisol – Since I have made this post I have done this across a few twitter accounts, I will share the results soon in a new post.