In my previous post, I talked about the fact that I started scheduling my tweets well in advance when I speak at conferences. This allows me to plan my social media strategy beforehand so that I can concentrate on prepping for my presentation and networking with other attendees on the day of the talk.
I finished my last article by stating that I will be writing next about the tool I used to schedule my tweets and some of the methods I employed. First, I will talk about the methods and then we will look at TweetDeck, the tool I used for my scheduled tweets.
Strategies
The way I approach the idea of queuing tweets is to focus first on the day before the event. I send out a tweet by announcing that I will be speaking at the conference. I also try to include the hashtag of the technology I am speaking about. I have browsed articles on what the best time to tweet is and that is generally early afternoon. By then most people are thinking about what they will be doing the next day, especially if they are going to a conference.
On the day of my presentation, I send out a tweet saying that I am headed to the conference to give my talk. I then send out a tweet 30 minutes before I speak with the session title and room number. I send another tweet with the same info 10 minutes before the talk. By then, attendees are moving to their next session.
Another strategy to employ is to tweet during meal times. Normally, attendees will have some time to kill before their sessions. If your seminar is upcoming then this is a good time to remind people about it. If you have already spoken, then take this time to share your slides or to thank the conference organizers and sponsors.
Be judicious though in your tweets. This article recommends tweeting once per hour and alternating your tweets each time. Make one tweet about self promotion and then make the next tweet about promoting the event. As always, make sure you use the official conference hashtag when tweeting so that your message appears on the conference twitter stream.
TweetDeck
The tool I use to queue tweets is TweetDeck. It is the official app of Twitter and it is similar to Hootsuite (which can also be used to schedule tweets). When you browse to the TweetDeck website you can log in with your Twitter account. There is also a Google Chrome App that you can use if you prefer.
Once you log into the app you can create your scheduled tweet. To do so, create a tweet as you normally would with TweetDeck by clicking the New Tweet button. The New Tweet flyout will appear.
Once your tweet has been written, instead of hitting the blue Tweet button to send the tweet immediately you can hit the Schedule Tweet button. Choose the date and time you want the tweet to appear and then click the blue Tweet button. As it says on the screen, “Your scheduled Tweet will send even if TweetDeck is not running at the time”.
Finally, if you want to see your scheduled tweets you can display them in their own column. To do that, click the + (plus) button to add a new column. Select Scheduled to add the Scheduled column to your app.
Within this column you can see your scheduled tweets. You can Edit them to change the message or timing, and you can also Delete them..
If you have tips on how you prep for your talks, or if you prefer another tool to schedule tweets, let me know with a comment below.
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