9 December 2008 2 Comments

Awhile back I let you all in on a new Twitter tool called Tweetlater . In that post I said I was setting up an account to see if it was going to affect my twittering in any way. Since then there have been several others who have weighed in on the use of Tweetlater. Some recommend, some advise stay away.

The Good

Tweetlater is a tool to help you send tweets or direct messages at preset times. That means you don’t have to be connected through Twitter by any of the various means in order to send a tweet. But, is that a good thing?

I have to believe that anything you can do to automate parts of your business, whether it is social or not, is a good thing. But, there needs to be some moderation. Use of anything automated within the social scene is a good thing as long as you can keep it in check and not take away the personal side of it. So… how can TweetLater be good for your twittering?

You can keep in touch with new followers when you’re not online. This is a great way to just send a "Thanks for following" type of direct message to a new follower. I believe that constant contact is essential to success, but you can’t possibly stay online 24 hours a day. For that reason alone TweetLater is useful.

You can have updates posted when you’re not online. Again, following on the keeping in contact theme being able to send updates to Twitter when you’re asleep is invaluable. Just make sure you have something to say or don’t do it. Just don’t have an automatic update at 2 in the morning with something stupid like "Going to the carwash then picking up dry cleaning!" Unless you usually do that at 2 AM. Maybe you could have a special blog post (also set up on an automatic posting) that goes live at that time. Then follow that up with an automatic posting from Tweetlater.

Automated keyword tracking. This is where TweetLater becomes very powerful. You can have TweetLater check out keywords you specify in the public Twitter stream and they will then send you an email with a digest of the tweets containing those keywords.

@Replies Digest. Again, knowledge is very powerful. Knowing all the @replies to your account is a great way to make sure you keep in touch with everyone who is responding to you. TweetLater will keep you updated with a daily email.

TweetLater does have some great things going for it. When used correctly you can have a powerful networking tool at your disposal.

The Bad

Like everything there are some down sides to every good thing. It keeps everything in balance.

Automation is very impersonal. One thing that I don’t really like about automation is that it is impersonal. It goes against everything social media is all about. Social media is about connecting in a personal way in order to get to know each other and be authentic. When you automate your responses it just doesn’t seem that way.

Automation makes you lazy. There is something that marketing with social media costs time. It is an investment that pays back in multiples but it can be something that turns a lot of people off. So, they look for automated tools that is suppose to free up your time in order to do something else. However, it begins to create a mindset where you don’t ever want to put in the time and you begin to get lazy with it.

It can sound spammy. I will be the first to admit that I’m not all that wound up about spam. Sure, I get a lot of it. In a lot of my social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter especially) get quite a few spam notices, updates, and messages. I just don’t get all that upset about it. That doesn’t mean a lot of people don’t. And there is a good reason. It takes time to sift through it and delete it. TweetLater could come off sounding spammy if all you do is say hello and include a link back to some product or website.

So, what do you do about TweetLater?

For me, it’s a question of how to use it rather than should you. I am in the opinion that it doesn’t hurt to set up some things for automation while you’re still working an social marketing plan to constantly include personal touches. In using TweetLater you could…

1. Set up an automated direct message for new followers thanking them for following you. No links included.
2. Follow up with a personal @reply to them as soon as you are online.
3. Set up a few tweets for late at night with a question, poll, or helpful link that could be used by your followers.
4. Keep track of certain keywords and either reply to the tweeter or retweet it.

There you go. TweetLater use that is both automated and personal. I suggest you give it a try as long as you can keep your own personal touches to Twitter.

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• TweetLater lets you tweet later.
• Is Automation A Terrible Trend?
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• Three Tips For Integrating Marketing Into Social Networking
• 25 Twitter Rules To Tweet By