Staying at the top of your game on social media can be difficult these days. Pay-to-play has become a major part of the social media scene, making it necessary to buy advertising on social channels. We must also post organic content for our followers. While social media algorithms usually penalize accounts that publish too frequently, Twitter seems to be the only social network that welcomes it, as long as it is not duplicated, over-automated content. The secret to your success on Twitter, though, will come down to choosing and properly utilizing the right Twitter scheduler for your needs, as scheduling posts is one of the best ways to show that you are an active user and ready to engage with your audience–provided, of course, that you tweet at peak times and make utilize an effective tool to do so.
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One of the best ways to deal with the sheer volume of content on social media is by using a scheduling tool, both for scheduling single posts and bulk scheduling to deliver continuous engagement. These allow you to set up posts for times when you can’t be online or set and forget a series. While social media schedulers are recommended for every social network, they are perhaps most important on Twitter. Let’s take a look at the why and how of using a Twitter scheduler, along with some great examples to get started with social media post automation via a reliable scheduler.
Why You Need a Twitter Scheduler
Getting a Twitter scheduler has many benefits. It’s more than simple convenience or daily posting. If you’ve ever tried to do a whole bunch of social media things throughout the day, you’ll understand how time-consuming social content can be while trying to keep engagement alive. Scheduling can step in and help with customer engagement, profile visits, and more. The most significant benefits are the following:
Increased productivity
There’s no question that batch processing of content ideas is more effective. Simply compose daily Tweets for a dedicated block of time, then start posting. In many cases, you can spend a half an hour and schedule dozens of future Tweets. Then, unless you need to change something, you can walk away from posting without sacrificing getting your posts out to a wider audience or the appearance of an active presence. This is more than simply convenient: with the time saved, you’re free to do other marketing tasks and continue to bring in a larger audience.
Consistency
Using a Twitter scheduler tool also helps with maintaining a consistent presence. Perhaps the best feature besides productivity is the ability to maintain a consistent posting schedule regardless of what happens to you. For instance, if you need to go on vacation, the scheduler tool can automate everything until you get back without sacrificing business growth. You can use an editorial calendar to compose Tweets and schedule them in advance.
Neutralized time zones and holidays
With a Twitter scheduler, it’s easy to let your online presence work for you 24/7 wherever you are in the world. For example, although I am US-based, I have clients in Asia. Having a video chat takes planning due to the time zones. However, I could use a scheduler on their behalf to ensure that client Tweets are sent out to reach their market, even if it’s the middle of the night their time when I set them. The same goes for holidays that are country-specific.
Time for engagement
Finally, using a Twitter scheduler frees up your time to actually engage through your online presence. This means responding to people who @mention you, use relevant hashtags, or otherwise ask for feedback. In addition, you can check the profiles of people who are engaging with your brand in different ways. Since many consumers prefer it when brands are responsive, this is a major advantage. Finally, having time for engagement frees you up to do more loyalty marketing campaigns.
What to Look for When Choosing a Twitter Scheduler
Now that you understand the value of using a Twitter scheduler, let’s take a look at the things you should consider when choosing one. They vary widely in features, ease of use, and cost. For that reason, these factors should be balanced and made by data-driven decisions to meet your company’s needs and budget.
Price
These applications, like so many others in marketing, have a wide range of prices. Some of them are free, while others can get quite pricey. On the other hand, there’s always a “value” proposition that surrounds key features and ease of use. Whatever scheduler you choose, make sure you’re getting the right product at the right price to maximize your ROI and business goals.
Ease of scheduling tweets
Some Twitter post scheduler developers have made their program easy to use, while others are more complicated. Sometimes this has to do with the number of options and features. However, the program should never be clunky or cumbersome. You need a post planner that’s intuitive and easy to understand.
Calendar
Does it offer a schedule or calendar to add tweets to? Since one of the major reasons to use a Twitter scheduler is supporting your editorial calendar, having a native calendar is a definite bonus. If the scheduler doesn’t have one, make sure you have another way to keep track of what needs to be said and when.
Ability to change the schedule
Sometimes it’s necessary to change schedules on Twitter. Can you easily move tweets around once they are scheduled? There are a lot of reasons why you might need to do this, such as a postponed sales event or changing corporate strategies. However, the most common situation is that you make a mistake during scheduling or decide to switch the order of Tweets. This process shouldn’t be complicated for your social messages, so plan accordingly.
Adaptability to emergencies
Is there a pause button in case you need to pause activity when there is a crisis? These crises can take many different forms. A key employee might die or resign suddenly. There also could be a disaster or challenge that interrupts operations. When the Colonial Pipeline was shut down by a ransomware attack recently, for instance, their social media accounts needed to be paused. They sent out new notices to update the public as needed–something that would be much easier with schedule platforms that offer that functionality.
Content curation
Depending on your price point and needs, you might need assistance with content curation. One way that a Twitter scheduler can be beneficial is if it gives you content suggestions. In this case, they typically base suggestions on keywords, topics, and your brand community.
Bulk Tweeting capabilities
Find out if you can upload tweets in bulk using .csv file or something similar. While this isn’t much of a concern with smaller brands, if your company handles several Twitter accounts per day, this can be an essential tool. After all, the less work you have to do, the more time you have to put into other social media marketing efforts. Plus, this feature reduces the risk of copying errors.
Evergreen Tweets
Next, consider if a Twitter scheduler will automatically (or semi-automatically) repost evergreen tweets, perhaps with variations of hashtags. In this case, it would mean sending the Tweet out at regular, predetermined intervals. Since Twitter has some restrictions on duplicate Tweets, you need to be certain that you’re in compliance with their policies while using a social scheduling tool. If your scheduler can save time by automating these Tweets, it can be an essential campaign creation tool.
Further Reading: Why Evergreen Tweets are Critical to Twitter Marketing Success
Analytics
Finally, consider whether or not your Twitter scheduler has analytics capabilities. If it’s an all-in-one social media manager, a social media analytics tool should be included. More bare bones options might not have–or need–this function. In general, the beauty of analytics being built into a scheduling tool is that you have more features in one place. If there are also curation and evergreen Tweet tools, the analytics data will assist in those functions to increase the benefit of scheduling Tweets.
The 21 Best Twitter Schedulers
Now that we’ve considered the features to look for in a Twitter scheduler, let’s look at some of the best. There are several different types of schedulers available, and they vary based on their scope. Some of them work only with Twitter, while others deal with social media scheduling as a whole. Finally, some of these Twitter tools are comprehensive social media dashboards.
Twitter-Owned Schedulers
Like most social media networks these days, Twitter wants its own piece of the pie. Because of this, they have purchased or developed two Twitter scheduler options.
1. Twitter
Twitter began offering the ability to schedule tweets on its web interface way back in May, 2020, but scheduling must be done for each individual Tweet by each individual user. You might think that there is no longer a need to continue reading this article, but the ability to only schedule one tweet at a time, and not set a pre-determined schedule to add the tweet to, means that this is by far the least efficient way to schedule a tweet and develop content recommendations – but it IS free!
Further Reading: The 3 Best Ways How to Schedule Tweets for Twitter
2. TweetDeck
With TweetDeck, you can “customize your Twitter experience.” This not only means scheduling Tweets, but deciding how your Twitter page will be laid out. While there is additional functionality in this original 3rd party client, the actual scheduling of tweets is the exact same as if you do it on Twitter’s web interface.
Twitter-Specific Schedulers
It used to be that these were the dominant kind of Twitter scheduler. However, most have gone out of business since Twitter announced scheduling or they have added other social networks and become general social media-specific schedulers. Nonetheless, we do have some quality options remaining, especially with the emergence of A.I. Note that most of these tools do more than just schedule tweets, so find the tool that adds the other functionality you might need to better engage with Twitter users and enhance your presence.
3. Tweet Hunter
Tweet Hunter is a scheduling service that helps you schedule Twitter posts, as well as comb social media content to create Tweets that will best benefit content writers and their audience. While many social media scheduling tools focus primarily on creating an interface used to schedule, Tweet Hunter combines mining information, creating Tweets, and subsequently scheduling those Tweets into a single, simple platform. This makes it easy to develop social media content for your Twitter that keeps abreast of any trends or pertinent information related to your field.
Further Reading: 13 Best AI Twitter Generators for Tweeting
4. Hypefury
Hypefury is a Tweet scheduler that allows a business owner or marketing team to both create and schedule Twitter content. It is among the social media scheduling tools that allows users to create and publish items from a single platform, as Hypefury provides a means of mining information to develop high-quality and compelling content for Twitter publication. Hypefury acts as a content calendar and social media account manager for Twitter in a single application to create best-performing content via a single source.
5. Twittimer
Twittimer is a scheduler designed for a small handful of social media platforms, including Twitter posts. Twittimer provides a means of scheduling social media posts quickly and easily, and is designed for consistency across several social profiles. A free service, Twittimer does not offer glitz or glam, but provides a no-nonsense Twitter scheduling tool that can be used for managing regular posts, reminding followers of upcoming events, and more. Compared to some of the other social media management tools, Twittimer does not provide a large amount of features with which to manage Twitter accounts or other social accounts; instead, it focuses on scheduling to Twitter profiles and leaves the content creation to other platforms.
Social Media-Specific Schedulers
I assume that you are not just on Twitter but also active on other social networks with loads of content to deliver. If that is the case, why limit yourself to a Twitter scheduler when a social media scheduler might be able to schedule your tweets to post on other social networks as well – or vice-versa?
6. SocialBee
SocialBee is a very agile application. Among its strengths is the ability to automatically make changes in successful posts, which really helps with the challenges created by Twitter’s reposting policy. In addition, you can put your posts into different content categories for posting, and even set them to target certain customer groups. Overall, a very powerful Twitter scheduler.
7. Circleboom
Circleboom can be used across many different social media channels, but also offers a specific subset of tools to service the Twitter social platform. With Circleboom, Twitter users can gather target audience information through analytics, delete Tweets, search tools to find relevant accounts, and fraud evaluation tools to identify spam accounts and fake followers. Far more than a simple social media calendar app, Circleboom is designed to manage Twitter accounts thoroughly and effectively to make the most of the social platform for business.
8. RecurPost
With RecurPost, you can do a few things very well: schedule posts, then engage with your audience. That’s because this app features an inbox which makes responding to audience questions, messages, and reposts easy. You can use it to monitor one brand or many, depending on your needs.
9. MeetEdgar
This application has two main distinct advantages. First, it’s a master at reposting high-performing content and assisting with content curation. MeetEdgar claims to help you “never run out of content,” making it possible to create unlimited posts with engaging content. The other distinctive feature is that it’s designed for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses. So if that describes you and you need a budget-friendly tool, check out MeetEdgar.
10. MissingLettr
Use MissingLettr if you need content curation, something to drive organic traffic, and a unified social media strategy. One of the big boons is that they have a native content calendar functionality. This allows for scheduling content months in advance. An added plus: they help with drip campaigns and content curation.
11. CoSchedule
Using CoSchedule, you can put all of your marketing in one place. That is, if you get their full-service marketing suite to manage blog posts, socials, and more. However, you can also purchase just their social media scheduling facility. This is easy to use, and compatible with several social networks. They also give you reports to share with stakeholders, and allow for easy rescheduling.
12. Planable
Are you just starting out? If so, you should know that Planable is a FREE Twitter scheduler. In addition, it helps you collaborate, plus post on many other social platforms to get your visual content and Tweets out there. The developers also pride themselves in how easy it is to use. Solopreneurs and freelancers take note!
13. Loomly
Loomly is great as a Twitter scheduler, because of its specific feature for Tweets: Twitter hashtag analytics tools and tracking of Twitter trends. You can use the platform to compose Tweets, as well. If you’re using Twitter to distribute content, this is a great tool; everything is in the same place.
Further Reading: Twitter Hashtag Search: The Definitive Guide
14. SocialOomph
If you like to “keep it simple” but still have your bases covered, check out SocialOomph. This tool helps you schedule posts on most social networks, publish an RSS feed, and certain websites (including WordPress). SocialOomph will also use advanced analytics to tell you when and where to post for maximum effect.
15. PostPlanner
This one is designed to get the most engagement possible. As part of this feature, PostPlanner grabs the best content from all over the web for curation. Consequently, they heavily support evergreen content to support some degree of feed automation through scheduling.
General Social Media Dashboards with Twitter Scheduling Support
Finally, no Twitter scheduler list is complete without discussing general-purpose dashboards with post scheduling functionality. Besides the specialized tools, you can also use your general social media dashboard to schedule tweets for your ideal periods of time. Just make sure they have all of the functionality that the other tools mentioned above have! In many cases, you may find that a combination of tools is ideal. Of course, having too many of them at once can make social media management clumsy, so choose carefully and investigate all platform promises.
16. SocialPilot
SocialPilot has different features depending on what you need, and it’s cost-effective. With that said, they have great features for a Twitter scheduler, including content curation suggestions, RSS support, and an excellent content calendar.
17. AgoraPulse
In the scheduling part of AgoraPulse, you can do more than just set and forget. Instead, you can use a visual calendar for scheduling, plus collaboration and reporting tools. Putting the posts into customizable columns and categories and setting them for reposting is also a snap. Finally, there’s a mobile app for professionals on the go.
18. SproutSocial
Sprout Social is great for its content calendar. While this is a feature of any decent Twitter scheduler, the one Sprout is offering has the extra benefit of being collaborative. So, if you have a large team then this is one of the better options.
19. Sendible
On Sendible, you can schedule posts months in advance. However, you can do more than that; they boast the opportunity to preview Tweets to ensure that they are on-brand. You can even edit your non-social media internet infrastructure. Note that this app is specially designed for agencies, to make sure your range of Tweets does not stray from the Tweet variations your brand has come to deliver.
20. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a general social media tool that provides scheduling features for your social media calendar. As a partial Tweet scheduler app, Crowdfire allows you to plan and schedule content in advance, and find information within their content library to continually develop new Tweets.
21. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is a powerful tool among social media tools, because it allows users to schedule and analyze content across many different platforms. From evaluating your Twitter audience, to setting up your posting calendar for Facebook, Iconosquare has you covered for all of your scheduling post needs, no matter the platform you are working within.
Further Reading: How to Conduct Your Own Twitter Audit for Free
No matter how large or small your business is, if you’re active on social media (you should be) then you’ll need a Twitter scheduler. As you can see, the options vary widely from specialty tools owned by Twitter itself, all the way to comprehensive social media management suites. Which one you choose should depend on what you need, how easy it is to use in your context, and whether or not you can get good value for money.
Hero photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
Twitter Scheduler FAQs
Yes, Twitter has added a native scheduler to its app. When composing a tweet, you can find the schedule icon on the bottom similar to other actions, and from there you can set the scheduled date and time for that individual tweet.
If you want to schedule tweets for free, you can use free tools available on the internet such as Buffer and Hootsuite. But like most free applications online, there will be a limit as to the number of tweets you can schedule. Or you can only use it for a limited time as a trial period.
Here are the steps on how you can schedule tweets on Twitter mobile app:1. Open your Twitter application on your mobile phone.2. Start creating your tweet as usual.3. Look for the calendar icon located just below the texts4. Choose the time and date you want your tweet to be posted.
TweetDeck only allows to schedule Tweets in advance for a specific time and date, not for recurring tweets.
Yes, you can queue tweets on both Twitter mobile app and web app. To do it, just create your tweet as you do normally and you will find a little calendar icon along with the other icons located at the bottom of the box where you are composing your tweet. If you click on that, it will allow you to set a date when you want your tweet to be posted.
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