Twitter is all about tweets. Your publicity is based on your frequency of tweeting. Having said that in one of my posts earlier, I had professed that the time that you spend decides the profitability of your online business and that you should minimize the time that you spend on Twitter. So how will I balance the time that I spend on twitter? I am sure this is the question that you too have.

I was busy building my followers until a few months back. But eventually I found that my followers were dropping of my following list. I kept wondering why until I stumbled upon an eBook on twitter. It was then that I realized that only building your follower count is not enough. You need to give them valuable content as well.

The very essence of blogging is content, that too, valuable content, be it contemporary blogging or, micro blogging. Twitter is no different. Though off late the behavior of Twitter users have changed, the more serious ones are still followers of good and valuable content. It is these gentry that you would normally want to target if you are serious about using Twitter successfully.

After I read the book, I stopped concentrating on building my follower list and started focusing on content. But then there was the constraint of the amount of time that I was spending at Twitter. I was finding it difficult to tweet enough at Twitter with the limited time that I wanted to spend there.

Tweeting more in limited time -

Twitter has a lot of features, primarily because of the API that it offers which could help you do a lot of tweeting in the limited time that you want to do it in. It is because of these features that I love twitter. What we are going to discuss below is a completely working and legal way of doing it. Though Twitter is against automated tweeting, the below mentioned techniques are not considered as automated tweeting.

The tools that your need are as follows:

• Google alerts – an account with Google
• Twitterfeed – Create an account at www.twitterfeed.com
• Twaitter – Create an account at www.twaitter.com
• RSS aggregator – If you are a blogger, your blog will already have an RSS creator and you will know the link to it.

Submitting good content to your Twitter followers automatically –

What we will now do is start a submission service so that you tweet the most recent and valuable information about the area of your interest or, your niche to your followers automatically. The steps involved in this process are as follows:

1. Create an account Google for setting up Google alerts. Remember that you can use this same login at Twitterfeed as well, thanks to the concept of Open ID.
2. At Google alerts create a new alert with the niche keyword term that your blog is based upon. Create this alert in a feed format and copy the url for the feed alert.
3. Move onto Twitterfeed and create a new feed for twitter. Insert the url that you copied at Google alert into the feeds box at Twitterfeed.

Twitterfeed will now keep submitting the latest updates about your niche automatically to your Twitter account and you will be giving good and informative content to your followers at Twitter. Just be cautious on one aspect. Do not submit too much of content automatically through this method. Just ensure that you have set the frequency of submission at Twitterfeed to about 2 updates every hour.

Automatically submit your blog feeds to twitter –

If you own a blog you would have always wanted to submit your blogs feeds automatically to Twitter. The following steps will help you do it –

1. Copy your blog feed url.
2. At Twitterfeed create another feed for Twitter and enter the feed url for your blog feed as the url. Use bit.ly as your url shortening service. You should create an account at http://www.bit.ly in order to get the bit.ly API code.

This will sent a tweet to you Twitter account, immediately after you create a new blog post at your blog. You will not have to run to twitter every time you have written a blog post in order to submit a tweet about your latest post.

Scheduling tweets for optimum utilization –

The fourth service that we discussed about was Twaitter. I had earlier written a post about Twaitter. If you know how to use this service, you will be able to make optimum utilization of the little time that you want to spend at Twitter. Schedule about 10-15 tweets at Twaitter about anything – from products that you are promoting to, good to know information and good tools available on the internet. Spend about 30 minutes every day to do this. Schedule these tweets in such a way that it is spread over the entire day. This will ensure that your tweets are posted to your twitter account even when you are not physically tweeting.

How much you want to utilize these services is entirely up to you. The benefit of this method is that you can set up a few feeds at Twitter feed and the tweeting is done automatically. All that you need to concentrate pm is Twaitter and spend around 30 minutes every day at Twaitter and you will be able to maintain a healthy profile at Twitter.

Photograph courtesy Sas Van Veen

The one application that most of the people who use Twitter are on the look out for is the one that can help them schedule tweets.

Spending too much of time on Twitter can be harmful to you and your business. So nobody would want to spend about 8 hours of the day tweeting. There are other important things to do. If you keep concentrating only on Twitter, you are sure to fail in your online business.

At the same time, tweeting is also important. Twitter is a very useful application and it can work as an amazing list. But in order for that to happen, you should tweet regularly. If your only activity at Twitter is adding followers and following them, then you are not a good Twitterer.

It is hence that you want an application that can schedule tweets, so that these tweets can be sent out at the scheduled time.

There are quite a few such application out there, but the better ones are always paid ones. And I don’t want to pay for something like that. This is why I was on the lookout for a free application that could do this.

One such application that I found is “Twaitter”. That’s an amazing name, isn’t it? The name itself says that it has something to do with waiting.

You can see the application and create and account here.

What are some of the features of Twaitter?

There are a lot of features that you would love to use at Twaitter. At least I do. And looking at the way they have launched, I am sure there would be much more to offer. Let’s see a few of them -

• Schedule: Schedule your twitter messages.
• Recurring: Set your twitter messages to send on recurring basis: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. (This feature is normally always a paid service. But you get this for free here.)
• Twitter Calendar: Manage your scheduled messages (Twaits) with our powerful calendar tool that works just like your Outlook calendar.
• Translation: Translate your tweets into any language with the click of a button. Do you follow tweeple that post in foreign languages? …easily translate any tweet into a language you understand. (This is another handy service that not too much applications out there provide you with.)
• Feeds: Register your blog or business RSS feed with twaitter and have your new posts automatically sent to twitter. (This feature is still under construction and is going to come soon).
• Schedule in Mass: Have a lot to say and a lot to schedule? Upload a file with your messages in our file format and we’ll be happy to schedule all the twaits for you.(This feature is also a work-in-progress and is scheduled to come soon).

I am sure you would love the scheduler at Twaitter. I fell in love with it (Let me see if my wife heard that .

This is not an affiliate offer, so don’t worry. I am not trying to sell you something. Check out Twaitter and you will know why I am going ga-ga obout Twaitter.

If you want to check out other similar products, you can visit Tweettank, which has many other features. But bear in mind that they are all paid. I will write another post on the features that Tweettank provides. It too is a handy service and at such a low price of $15.40, it is a steal of a deal. You heard that right. It is the price for a lifetime subscription.

What is the most efficient way to use Twitter?

How wise is it to spend a lot of time at Twitter?

Twitter can be a traffic monster. If used appropriately, you can get scores of traffic from Twitter to your blogs, websites or, sales pages. This is a known fact, right? You might then be wondering as to what is the “appropriate” way to use Twitter.

In order to make the most out of Twitter, it is recommended that you do not spend more than 30 minutes on Twitter. But how will you do all the follower building activity?

The very essence of any social marketing website and networking on  a social marketing website is “sharing“. You share information with people who recommend you to other friends of theirs, if they find that the information you are sharing is worth referring. Same is the case with Twitter.

One of the activity that consumes the most amount of time in Twitter is sending our valuable tweets to your existing followers so that they can take advantage of the information and share it (retweet in Twitter language), with their followers and friends. At this point I should mention the fact that it is this same activity that has made Twitter this popular.

Hence the context of this post is to make sharing of information easy for you, thus reducing the time that you would have spent on tweeting information. What would be a way of doing this? This can be done by scheduling your tweets.

How to Schedule Tweets?

There are a lot of applications, courtesy the API feature of Twitter, that provides you a feature of scheduling your tweets, so that irrespective of, if you are surfing the internet or, sleeping. But the sad part is that most of these application charge you something in order to avail this feature.

I came across one such application that was free of cost and offered a more user-friendly interface to schedule your tweets. This is Twuffer.

This is the login page to Twuffer. If you look at this page you will find that you do not have to register at Twuffer in order to start using it. All that is required is your Twitter user name and password. That save quite a bit of time, when you decide to opt for any service.

On logging in, Twuffer will ask for authorization to connect to your Twitter account. Once authorized, you are good to go.

This is the interface for Twuffer. (Click on the image to enlarge it). The interface is pretty simple and there is nothing much to explain.

There is a text box similar to that of Twitter where you can write your tweet text. Just below that are the options to decide when you want Twuffer to send out this tweet to Twitter. You can set anytime of your choice so that Twuffer send out the tweets at the scheduled time.

Just below the scheduler is the dashboard with information like your queued tweets, sent tweets and you settings. Pretty Simple, eh!!

There is something that I miss in the service that is offered by Twuffer. This is a “URL shortening service”. If you want to add tweets to your schedules, you will have to shorten your urls using a different service, which at times is inconvenient.

Set this inconvenience apart and you have a perfect application to schedule your tweets.

Check out Twuffer and do let me know what you feel about this service.

Photograph courtesy T. Al Nakib

I would not use Twitter at all!! It is rubbish.

Are you surprised at my statement? You have to be.

Since the day Twitter has risen in the internet marketing horizon, thousands of applications have cropped up like mushrooms all around Twitter, thanks to the friendly API from Twitter.

But how many of these applications live upto the expectations?

And how many of them are there in existence even after a month of launching?

You can count them on your fingers. “Twitter” is the most happening term right now and everybody wants to get a slice of the Success PIE from Twitter.

One of these thousands of applications that cropped up was “Tweetlater“, but with the only difference that this application is still here and is here to stay.

What is Tweetlater?

Twitter can be a time-consuming affair. It could destroy your entire internet marketing business, if not used correctly. I have seen people spending hours and hours of their time on Twitter only to find that they have done nothing constructive in the entire day.

At the same time, Twitter could turn out be the next best thing for your business, provided it is used correctly.

It is advised that you should not spend more than 15-20 minutes a day on Twitter. But….

1. If you had to send a Tweet out to your followers 15 times in a day, what will you do?
2. If you had to reciprocate the courtesy by following people who are following you, 3 times a day, how will you do it?
3. If you wanted to unfollow the people who are unfollowing you throughout the day, how will you do it?
4. If you had multiple Twitter accounts and you wanted to manage all of them, how will you do it?
5. How will you keep yourselves updated about everything that is happening in your niche?
6. How will you clear the “Already read” Direct Messages in your account?

After you have read the above few questions, I am sure you might have gone into a spiral thinking about the activities that you normally have to do at Twitter. Indeed, there is quite a bit to be done at Twitter.

So, when the recommendation is to spend about 15-20 minutes at Twitter, how will you manage to do all of the above activities?

The answer to all these questions is “TWEETLATER“.

Tweetlater will do all of this for you. All you have to do is spend about 15-20 minutes everyday at Tweetlater and you will not have to look at Twitter at all.

What’s the best about Tweetlater?

Tweetlater has a feature that lets you schedule tweets. This means that my tweets are being published even when I am sleeping. I love this feature of Tweetlater and I am sure, you too would.

Who would not want and application that would keep doing things for you even while you are asleep?

In the PRO version of Tweetlater which comes for $ 29.97 per month, there is also a feature of scheduling recurring tweets. This is the feature that I enjoy the most.

Recurring tweets helps you in setting up a tweet that will keep publishing on Twitter again and again after the interval you have set. So if there is am important message that you want to re-tweet for a specific amount of time, you don’t always have to be logged into Twitter to keep tweeting it, say after every hour. Instead, just schedule it in Tweet Later Professional and Tweetlater will do the job for you.

What more can you ask for?

In addition to scheduling, Tweetlater also helps you in managing multiple Twitter accounts, Sending DMs and managing your DM account and Managing your followers.

So when I said I would not use Twitter at all, what I meant to say is that, now I will not have to spend hours and hours at Twitter, instead all that I have to do is login to my Tweetlater Professional account.

Get you Tweet Later account for free today. Check it out.

Photograph courtesy Shadowkill