Let’s face it… Twitter is hard. To use Twitter well can be time consuming and very demanding. However, there are tools you can use to make Twitter easier and fit it into your schedule. The most useful tool is scheduling Tweets.
The Twitter web application (i.e. logging into your account at twitter.com) does not have any native scheduling capability. The web app is great for working your Twitter account in the moment. It’s easy to see who has mentioned you, monitor what’s happening on your lists, and have those spontaneous conversations that Twitter is great for. But when it comes to scheduling, you have to use another tool.
There are lots of tools to let you schedule Tweets. Some are expensive, some are free, some are really complicated and some are super simple. But when it comes to scheduling Tweets, my two favorite tools are TweetDeck and Hootsuite. In terms of scheduling, both of these tools offer pretty much the same features, with one important difference.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck lets you add multiple Twitter accounts so that you can manage a lot of accounts in one place. More importantly, it allows you to schedule Tweets for future dates and times. The interface is easy to use and appealing, and there’s also smartphone versions of TweetDeck so you can Tweet on the go. If you’re looking to completely replace the Twitter web app, TweetDeck is your best option.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a bit more complicated than TweetDeck. It does all of the same things, but lets you manage social accounts other than Twitter. More importantly, Hootsuite has a bulk scheduling feature. You can create many days of Tweets in a csv file and upload them. There’s a free version of Hootsuite, but $9.99 will get you all the best features.
