I have a college buddy who is a big gambler. Lets call him, Rick. So every five years or so, I find myself in Vegas with Rick and some other guys from my youth as we pretend that we are 21 again. So one year we’re out there and Rick tells me about Keno. Keno is like playing the lottery. You pick numbers, they draw numbers, you usually lose. Rick tells me that because it’s so boring to sit there and watch, he likes to play Keno while he sleeps. Gambling while you sleep? Ok, Rick. I”ll give it a try. Went to bed, woke up, ate breakfast and learned I lost $50. This is great, Rick! (There should be a sarcasm font) I stopped playing Keno while you sleep. Where am I going with this?
Hoot Suite. Great application that allows you to enhance your Twitter experience. I started using it a couple of weeks
ago after having been on Tweet Deck for about a year. It has everything you could want from a Twitter application standpoint, but the most interesting feature is scheduling your tweets. That’s right, “Tweet while you sleep!”
So I’m at dinner the other night and I get this text from our intern, “Are you tweeting right now!?” Oh no, I’ve been hacked, I thought. Then it dawned on that I had scheduled a tweet at 7:35 p.m. – and it all made sense. I’ll admit I’ve scheduled some tweets, typically during hours when I am not in the office. Occassionally I’ll get that, “Jeez, Fleming, why are you tweeting at three in the morning?” – to which I reply, “Why are you reading at three in the morning?”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about “Tweet while you sleep” concept. Does it take away from the open, honest and authentic conversation that social media advocates tend to preach? I felt kind of dirty in an electronic way. So I asked Mike Sansone, a.k.a. the Blog Father of all things social in Des Moines. Now, I equate an opinion from Sansone to the Life Cereal campaign back in the 70′s. The whole, “If Mikey likes it theory, then I’m good.”
According to Sansone, he’s down with scheduling tweets if you are “sharing resources.” So, sending out blog posting
links, or links to other valuable content is ok. What Sansone advised against was not to schedule tweets that would be considered “conversational” in nature. So, no replying to a mention via a scheduled tweet, or bantering on a scheduled basis. I agreed with him on all points.
Sansone and I went on to talk about the benefits and value of scheduling your tweets. Different audiences at three in the morning than three in the afternoon. International audiences for US tweeters in the middle of the night. New ways to form relationships by providing content at off hours for you, but peak hours for someone else.
In Summary: Keno while you sleep, BAD. Tweet while you sleep, GOOD!
How do you see it?
Author: Josh Fleming
www.lessingflynn.com
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Josh, With my crazy schedule I have at times, I may be tweeting in real life at 3 am in the morning.
I like what Mike has to say on this matter though in scheduling tweets where you share information or links. For those where you @ someone, I believe one should do it when they are awake. 
I have heard about scheduleing Tweets, first from Jeff Garrison, but I have never looked into it. But, to your point, I could Tweet the link to my Blog at hours that I currently do not use and potentially gain readers…so it makes complete sense. I am leary though, because of your first ‘devils advocate’ point about authenticism or if people over-use the concept and Tweet every hour on the hour about the same thing.
I love the idea of “timed tweets.” I like to schedule mine for early in the morning….like 5 or something so people might think “wow…she really gets after it…tweeting before the sun rises?! that’s dedication” it’s all an illusion I’m happy to play with.
I have a love/hate relationship with scheduling tweets. I love hoot suite in general and have found that scheduling is the only way I can get my tweets posted during the day right now because I’m not available to be with my cell or computer. I think Mike Sansone’s take on it is fine – if it’s something that is a resource it seems acceptable to me.
BUT
I don’t really enjoy doing it this way. It eliminates the ability to engage in conversations with people because if they comment on my tweet it seems jarring to reply 8 hours later. I also feel like a “bot”. It would be weird if I scheduled things that were conversational but even with links to my posts it still is less than ideal. But tweeting has been a key way to drive traffic to my site so I’m still doing it this way.
Are more followers better? Are more tweets better? I’ve been thinking more and more that quality is better than quantity. Still, nothing beats an old fashioned handshake and the simple twitter status update within the “old skool” twitter app is why twitter didn’t build a tweet deck or a hoot suite to begin with. You’ll see, this app’ll get abused like every app eventually does and it’ll soon look like MySpace. Use it while the world abuses it and we’ll be back to good handshakes and white milk in no time at all.
Slash, you bring up some interesting questions and have inspired a blog post idea for me. More on that later and I will DM you when I post it! Thanks!