Twitter Auto Posting Lessons

A few weeks ago you may have read about my auto posting experiment which turned out rather successful. Before I conducted this posting plan I was not in favor of auto posting and thought I would never do it. That line of thought has changed for me and it will be something I will be doing more often.

I knew with a few tweaks it could be something that could aid a social business plan. After looking at results a little more closely I noticed a few things. Since my last post I have run this across different accounts with very varied results. One thing I noticed is you have to have a good plan and not just set up a bunch of tweets to go out  automatically.

For the second set of auto tweets I had more planned for hours that I would be online, I noticed that even though the post in the middle of the night were not done to get a reaction and an interaction they just didn't get the amount of results I expected. Instead of tweeting every half hour or so I cut them back to once an hour. This was done just to keep my keyword terms into the recent results if someone used Twitter search.

This time around most of the tweets were set up for more interaction. Some involved some slightly opinionated and heavily discussed topics in the niche that I knew would get a response. Sure putting some opinionated tweets out there may lead people into trouble but done carefully and thoughtfully it shouldn't be a problem. It sparks a reaction and from that you get interaction from people you may not have had at all. Turning that person into a paying customer is now a reality because they respect your position. (I feel another post coming on that topic)

Since I was awake for most of this auto posting one of the accounts I used was the same as the last test so I could judge the differences between the two. I am glad I did this as it really showed how auto posting could be used as a guide. I started off and made up 48 tweets designed with better questions and I had a list of better landing pages where I could send the user off to.

The auto post went out every 20 minutes instead of every 30 minutes. This allowed me to get in 3 tweets an hour instead of 2 an hour like the previous test. The reactions were so much better and during the course of this I had more interactions with people in the niche that I hadn't had before. Here is the kicker, as I was exchanging with people another question or fact would be tweeted. All of a sudden we had something new to exchage about. The first time this happened I didn't have a clue as to what the peeople were talking about with me as I was still heavily involved with the first tweet that went out. This is were I saw the power of auto-tweeting, not using it to just throw tweets out there and hoping someone sees them. This time it was used as a posting aid.

Over the next few hours we exchanged a lot of tweets, it was by far the most tweeting I have done on one account in one day. I wasn't glued to the computer as you would expect. I went about my normal business and had Hootsuite loaded in another browser that I went back to every 10 minutes or so. I also had my email open in case of a direct message.

After all was said and done

• I interacted with over 210 tweets
• Sold 9 items through the store.
• Had 16 people sign up for the email newsletter
• 20 more twitter followers.
• 5 more likes on the Facebook fan page
• 33% increase in my contextual ad revenue.

Although we only picked up only 20 more followers it should be noted that most people on Twitter in the niche are already followers. The real gold here is the email newsletter sign up because now I can interact/market to these people as I see fit. I also learned the Hootsuite needs an affiliate program because with results like this I would be able to market it until the cows come home.

Am I sold on auto posting?  Yes, but not as a set it and forget it. It will be used as a tool in the arsenal as a Tweeting guide.