How To Schedule Retweets So You Don't Annoy Your Followers

So you're following a bunch of great, insightful people and you've just spotted four of their tweets you'd like to retweet to your own followers. You happily click "retweet" four times, fully expecting your followers to continue the retweet chain, and maybe even thank you for sharing such great links and insight. But alas, such is not the case. You click away from Twitter for a few minutes, and when you click back, not only do you not have any replies or retweets, but you've actually lost nine followers! Retweeting too close together is a problem on Twitter, and one that can quickly annoy your followers. Here's how to share the tweets you love, without bombarding your followers with a wall of retweets. First, if you're still using Twitter's "new retweet" style, you've got to revert back to the old. The new retweets look like this: The little green arrows in the corner mean the tweet has been retweeted, They don't let you add your own comment to the retweeted tweet, or change the text in any way. They're very passive. Plus, they show the avatar of the person you're retweeting, not you - which means that your followers will see a stranger in their timeline, and will be significantly less likely to engage with the content. And, most importantly for our purposes, you can't schedule these type of retweets. So if you're still using these "new retweets" - which are the default on Twitter.com - I suggest you switch now. Old-style retweets allow you to edit the tweet and add your two cents, give credit to the original tweeter while showing your avatar as the one retweeting it, and can be scheduled. Here's how to use HootSuite to sent old style retweets, and a way to send them from Twitter.com. You can also make the switch if you're using any other dashboard, such as TweetDeck, Seesmic or CoTweet. You'll need to use a dashboard, not Twitter.com, if you want to schedule these old-style retweets. The next time you see a tweet you find interesting or useful, simply click the retweet button from within your dashboard of choice. The text of the tweet, along with "RT @username" at the beginning should transfer to your status box like the image below: From here, you can add a comment before the RT or after the content of the tweet, and you can schedule this tweet like you would any other tweet that you had penned. Simply click on the calendar button on your dashboard, which should be beneath or beside the status box. Choose the day and time that you want to send your retweet and click "schedule". The retweet will then be sent at the selected time, rather than right when you clicked "retweet". This means that you can queue up several retweets to go live at various points throughout the day, and avoid alienating your followers by sending out a block of retweets all at once. (Top image: Korn via Shutterstock)

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How To Schedule Retweets So You Don't Annoy Your Followers

Lauren Dugan

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Lauren Dugan