Help Articles/Community Help/User-Created Tutorials

How To Use Hootsuite to Schedule Tweets

Nate Balcom
posted this on November 15, 2010 11:49

Why Should I Schedule Tweets?

Scheduling tweets is a good way to market prior posts with the addition of different titles and or keywords as well as hashtags. Many times when you write a post people have a number of keyword searches that they use to arrive on your page. Even if you're using due diligence while researching keywords it's often hard to determine what keyword phrase or grouping will trigger the most traffic. By retweeing prior posts you can get them in front of the eyes of your followers that may have missed it before. Not only that, but you can and should try different keyphrases in order to generate more targeted traffic.

Example: With the article I wrote; 10 More Droid Apps You Must Have, I realized after looking through Google Analytics that the way people were finding this post was by entering, "must have droid apps". So when I went to  re-schedule a tweet it looked something like this.

Must have droid apps you can't live without - http://ow.ly/38goe #droid

By re-wording your posts you appeal to a wider and often different market. Not only will this be re-broadcast to your Twitter followers, but also be picked up in the search engines and aggregators with your newly rephrased title. So now that I've told you why this is important let's look at how to do it.

How To Schedule Tweets With Hootsuite

1. If you haven't done so already sign up for an account and download the program at Hootsuite.com. It's free, but they do offer a paid version which includes unlimited social networks.

2. Sign in to your panel and create your tweet. See the screenshot below.

3. From this panel you'll be able to set the date, time and social network you wish to post to. Right now Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, Wordpress, MySpace and Foursquare are supported by Hootsuite, but new networks are added all the time.

4. Once this is set you'll see your tweet show up in the pending Tweets panel of Hootsuite.

It's just that simple. Now you're tweet is ready to go. Play around with the time of day you send your tweets out. For instance I sent the following tweet out to coincide with, The Walking Dead Debut Halloween night.

Zombie SEO – Night of the Living Thread – http://ow.ly/2MNem #zombie #seo

Every blog niche is different. Problogger says you should time your posts to go out during business hours Mon-Fri US time. As our niches are fairly similar I find that this is when I garner most of my traffic. And he's from Australia, but this is his most effective time for posting. You can toy around with what time you posts your tweets and follow your traffic to see when the best time of day works for you.

 

Comments

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Capability Mom
Basic Support

i still cannot schedule tweets but i could before

January 11, 2011 05:16
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Keks Pucci
Basic Support

I schedule tweets and theu just won't go... 

February 01, 2011 04:20
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Capability Mom
Basic Support

Thanks - I figured it out - the tweets can't be the same - and you nicely explain why they shouldn't be anyway - or it is read as spam. Thanks for the nice article.

February 01, 2011 05:10
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Nate Balcom
Basic Support
Hi Capability Mom. Sorry about the delayed response. I really need to thin out my Gmail account. Would you mind posting your issue here for others to learn from.
February 01, 2011 10:08
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Danny Kovoloff
Basic Support

My scheduled tweets just don't go through, don't appear pending sometimes. This has only been happening the past week or two. Used to work fine. Any issues with this? Seems Pucci is having the same problem.

February 18, 2011 11:21
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Jill Hagler
Basic Support

Anyone know why I can't schedule tweets anymore? I used to do it all the time. Now when I click on the calendar nothing happens. Very frustrating. TweetDeck here I come.

March 14, 2011 18:02
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Dom King
Basic Support

I'm getting this error message whenever I try and schedule a message.

 

Some messages were unable to be sent. 

Reason: Could not connect to Twitter

March 16, 2011 23:48
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Carolina Leon
Basic Support

So I came here to ask and finding there are many with the same error. Since this morning, I cannot schedule (twitter and facebook). I thought the problem was Hootsuite can not send the message while computer is offline, but this is a bit bizarre, isn't it? 

March 17, 2011 06:50
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Wendy Sanacore
Basic Support

I uploaded and scheduled a batch of tweets yesterday, however, I want them to continue to tweet on a repetitive basis after they have all been tweeted, any idea how I can do this?

March 24, 2011 06:06
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Jaye
Basic Support

where is the pending tweets panel? probably right in front of me...can't find it.

April 15, 2011 10:10
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PRODUCTORA Y COMERCIALIZADORA DE TELEVISION SA de CV
Pro Support

Wendy Sanacore: the easiest way to do this is to repeat the tweets in the excel file you originally used for the batch tweets. Autofill formulas in Excel let you create these cycles automatically in the same increments. I do recommend however, to not become a fully automated account... try to engage your audience with slightly different posts so that they won't have to feel like they are following a robot. My twitter account is @jgdealba if I can be of further service to you! All the best!

April 19, 2011 11:07
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Cindy
Pro Support

When I upload scheduled csv some of the tweets are not pulling in the urls, # and/or @... seems to be random.  I have examined the spreadsheet to try and find similarities with the posts that are not uploading correctly, but I'm not seeing any pattern.  Is punctuation a no-no or am I just not getting something very simple?  How to? As a result of this, I then have to go into "Pending Tweets" and individually delete each tweet - there's too much missing to edit each one.  I just want to find out what I need to do to FIX whatever it is that needs fixing.  Comment?

May 28, 2011 10:34
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Waynette Tubbs
Basic Support

I have the same issue as Cindy. This problem has never occured before - I have scheduled tweets successfully for a couple of months. But on or about May 24, my tweets from Hootsuite were truncated at random lengths: some after the first word, some after several words. Please let me know when you have this problem fixed. Thanks!

June 03, 2011 12:01
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Waynette Tubbs
Basic Support

For me, this is issue is doubly embarrasing as there doesn't seem to be a "Pending Tweets" section to access and remove the tweets proactively. I'm left to find the tweets in my stream after my followers have already seen them. Not a professional image!

June 03, 2011 12:08
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Pilar Woodman
Basic Support

i want to do a separate post to twitter and to facebook, but no matter what i choose i always get the facebook icon and the twitter icon in my scheduled posts.  frustrating and limiting.  help!

June 17, 2011 12:07
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Marco Wegleiter
Basic Support

Do you also offer a recurrence feature? I would like to tweet some messages several times, like every 2 days without setting up a new schedule every time.

June 21, 2011 01:01
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chris stephenson
Basic Support

Marco or anyone, if you find out how to do recurring tweets please let me know- @steadyhandchris

 

thanks!

June 27, 2011 10:30
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Sarah
Basic Support

I seem to be having the same problem as Jill Hagler. Using the chrome app when I click on the calendar button to schedule a tweet nothing happens, I don't get the calendar flyout, nothing. In fact none of those button along the bottom of the new tweet box work. What's up???

July 06, 2011 18:02
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Simon Hayhurst
Basic Support

I have the same problem as Marco - I want to be able to set up the same tweet to go out a number of times, at different points in the day, over a number of days. Is this possible? Or do I have to copy and paste the same tweet and schedule it individually a number of times (if that makes sense).

Thanks in advance

July 22, 2011 05:29
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Peggy Hyde
Basic Support

I would really appreciate your help.  When i SCHEDULE posts, the program makes me wait for 2-3 hours to post them, saying you have to post them 5 min in the future.  I have a feeling this has to do with a time zone difference but I'm not sure.  I live in the south and have my account set for that area.  It also doesn't always send them out at the time I set them up for.  I'm really confused.  Any ideas on what I can do to fix this?

Thanks!

July 28, 2011 13:10
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Leah Kirsten
Basic Support

Why is it when I try to attach an image to a FB post for a business, it asks me to choose a supported social network and gives me the option to choose a twitter feed?

April 26, 2012 07:54
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Samara Foisy
Basic Support

I schedule tweets but they don't send

May 09, 2012 07:36
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Patrick
Basic Support

I schedule Tweets, I get confirmation that they have been sent, but there is no record of the tweets...  just a little graphics wheel that spins and spins and spins...

Also - the support doc above says to install the Hootsuite App... and I can't find that either.  It's an older doc, perhaps it needs to be updated?

TIA for your help!

May 09, 2012 10:29
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Vijay Sharma PhD
Basic Support

is there a provision that I add some text to be tweeted to XXXX numbers of Hash Tags with # sign. What I am requesting is to know that I can put my message in one box, then have it distributed with the prefix of #keyword(s) from some saved  list on Hoot suite and rather than type it over and again and suggest time of the day, to save time? Could that time be saved too, so that only the text gets changes and the rest of the tags and timing stay for the next day?

May 09, 2012 12:48