How Often Should I Tweet?

“How often should I tweet?” is a question I hear on a regular basis. I have some different ideas around how often to tweet and how to make that happen.

Guy Kawasaki’s suggestion

Guy Kawasaki, who has 1.4 million followers on Twitter suggests sending out 50 different tweets, each repeated four times every day! 50 times four equals 200 tweets per day! Why do you think he tweets so often without people getting annoyed? Well, obviously he knows what he’s doing because he has 1.4 million followers.

Why so much content?

So, let’s pick this apart a little bit. Why does he share so much content? Think about how many people use Twitter, millions of people, and think about how many tweets are shared on Twitter every day—millions of tweets. Also think about how many different time zones there are around the world. Just because somebody in the United States or Canada sees a tweet at 2:00 PM, Eastern doesn’t mean that somebody in Ireland or Australia is going to see the same tweet at the same time. By sharing tweets regularly, he is exposing more people to his information and helping them find him. Yes, hashtags can be helpful in sharing content and allowing people to follow what you’re doing. However, if it’s the first time they’re exposed to you, sharing tweets regularly throughout the day increases the possibility that new people will find you and be able to follow you. I believe that’s why Guy Kawasaki suggests the 50 different tweets each repeated four times a day.

How do I come up with that many different ideas?

Now you may be saying, how does a person come up with that many different ideas? It may take you a while to build up to those 50 different tweets daily, especially if you’re doing that seven days a week, all month. That’s a lot of tweets but remember you can change tweets a little bit and reshare them, or you can use different apps. One that I have found helpful is Social Jukebox. You can upload a CSV file if you have several tweets to upload. That way you don’t have to type all the tweets out individually. Uploading the tweets will allow you to use and reuse them. You can specify in Social Jukebox whether you want the tweets to be used once, or whether you want them to be used for a specific period of time or whether you just want them to keep repeating. A feature I appreciate about Social Jukebox is if there is a warning from Twitter, it will show up and Social Jukebox will let you know that specific content is not being repeated anymore. That way you can tweak it or change it or add something different.

The 4-1-1 Rule for Content

Many people use the 4 1, 1 rule—four pieces of content, one retweet or comment, and one marketing tweet. And he doesn’t really share how often he does that. But I’m assuming he repeats that many times throughout a day. Four pieces of content—whatever you are focusing on teaching or helping people with or helpful information from other people. Content is different than your marketing tweet. The content would be basic information that people would find helpful and interesting or amusing or humorous. You can go through the Twitter timeline and find tweets that are interesting to you or relate to you in your business or you and your book and retweet them or use the option to comment and share your feedback about specific tweets.

Marketing tweets

We looked at the four content tweets and the retweet. Now let’s think about the one marketing tweet. This tweet is where you share what you have for sale. What you offer. You encourage people to purchase something from you. These are your marketing tweets. You can include pictures of the product, testimonials, reviews, and other information your clients or customers will find helpful.

Grant Cardone’s perspective

Grant Cardone says there’s no such thing as too much content. However, he does say 80 to 95% of your tweets should be information only and only five to 20% of your tweets should be promotional. So that goes back to the 4-1-1 rule. Some people say up to one in four (25%) of your tweets can be marketing tweets. Think about the kinds of tweets you appreciate and do the same thing. Make sure that you are sharing helpful information, you are being friendly, you are encouraging others, and you are consistently posting content that’s helping people.

Focus on building relationships

Remember tweeting and Twitter should be about building relationships. You don’t want it to be all about you. You want to build those relationships so that you can build your community and have conversations with people so that you know what your audience wants. What are their pain points? W What do they enjoy? What are they looking for?

Monitoring your notifications

One action that might help you as you build those relationships is monitoring your notifications, the little bell symbol in Twitter. These will help you see when people like what you share, when they mention you, when they reply to you and when new people follow you. So if somebody responds to what you are sharing, check to see if you’re following them or want to follow them and make sure you comment about some of their tweets so that you’re starting to build that relationship with them.

Responding to mentions

If somebody mentions you in a comment, again, comment back, thank them for the mention. Some people suggest that every Friday you mention those that you appreciate who are helping share your messages. You can just tweet something like, “Thank you for the mentions and retweets and likes,” and then put their Twitter handles in the tweet so that people know that those are individuals who are helpful and helping you by sharing your content.

Building relationships with replies

If somebody replies to you, make sure you are replying to them so they’re not met with silence. When someone is reaching out to you with a reply, they obviously appreciate what you’re doing, and they want to interact with you. Maybe they’re giving you feedback. Maybe they’re helping you mention a Twitter space or another event that you’re hosting. Maybe they are answering a question in a Twitter chat. Make sure again, that you reply to those that are replying to you.

New followers

Under notifications you will also be able to see new followers. Twitter lets you know when people follow you. Of course, you’re not going to be on Twitter twenty-four hours a day. This post discusses eight different tools that are available to help you manage followers. When you do see in the notifications that somebody has followed you, go to their profile, check it out, see what they’re all about and see if it would be helpful for you to follow them back. If you want, you can choose a day to mention all your new followers. How wonderful would that be?

Start and continue building those positive relationships and let people know that you are paying attention and you are interested in what they are doing and who they are, and it’s not all about you. After all, Twitter is social media. So be social, build those relationships, build those friendships.

Do you have other tips to share about tweeting and building relationships on Twitter?

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