A Twitter Tale…From the Riverbank

No too long ago I was talking with Sean, at one of RemainComm’s great clients, about how to manage updates to Twitter. One of the strategies with this particular client revolves around thought leadership marketing. I wanted to share this analogy I used to explain how best to feed the stream with our relevant tweets.*

When thinking about how most use Twitter, consider this; A single tweet floats along the endless Twitter river while the follower sits calmly on the bank (at their desk or on the phone). Imagine if that follower happens to close their eyes for a short nap (works or takes a call). If you’ve posted three tweets in a short period of time, those three tweets floated by as they are blissfully slumbering. Of course, when they wake they can run down the bank (scroll through their feed) and look for what has already gone down stream, but they’re only going to run (scroll) so far. I believe there is a better chance of reaching them if one of those tweets floats by after they wake up (gets back to their feed). Then another floats by when they walk down the bank for home.
Of course, there are exceptions to this. For example, if you’re live tweeting an event or participating in a conversation. On those occasions the follower is sitting on the bank or standing on a bridge for the purpose of watching the river.
Bottom line: Spread out your tweets or use a scheduling function available on many management systems (Hootsuite, etc) to spread out the tweets. You spend the same amount of time posting but you get better results.

*This story inspired by Hammy and Tales of the River Bank