Scheduling Tweets

I’ve been blogging for almost three years now and I’ve only started scheduling tweets a few months ago. And I have to be honest with you guys, I don’t do it very often. I thought about writing this post for a while, to explain it to you guys.

I started out as a book blogger only and in our #bookbloggers community the matter never came up, I never heard anything about scheduling tweets and I don’t think my book blogging friends do it (sorry if you do it guys ;)). When I started to add lifestyle posts and also engaged into that community the topic came up. It seems to be very popular with beauty bloggers, fashion bloggers and lifestyle bloggers. Some of the schedule everything: Around four tweets on the blog post for the day, promotion for their Instagram, facebook or youtube and also just random tweets. For me this thought was never appealing. It’s additional work and preparing them for every single day just sounded like too much. If I’m at work, I just tweet whenever I can, I do one before the kids arrived, one around lunch and then two in the evening when I’m back home. Of course that doesn’t work everyday, sometimes I’m too busy at work, I also tend to forget to do it and when days are different than usual, things get messed up anyway. On weekends it’s similar. I schedule my blog posts to go up in the morning, but I only tweet around 11 am for the first time, after I get up. When I got away for a day I tend to schedule tweets about my blog post, if I have one. Then I only prepare them in the morning though and only if I have enough time. Especially when I got to Germany for the day, I can make sure my posts are still promoted. This is something I only started in the last few months though. I I really only do it, when I know I’m away for a whole day.

When I’m away for just a few days, I usually don’t have any blog posts scheduled, unless I’m still in Switzerland and then I just use my data. When I’m away for more than two weeks I didn’t schedule anything either, except for blog tours sometimes and cover reveals and I only promote them with the wifi I find, wherever I am.

I know, that schedule tweets is really good apparently to gain more followers for your blog and get people to read your posts, but for me it’s not worth it, if that makes sense. Of course I’d like to gain more followers and have a lot of people read my blog posts, but I feel scheduling is really an unnatural way to achieve that. I think it’s more important to stay true to yourself, tweet when you have time and be honest with your readers. Scheduling tweets and promoting constantly makes me feel that all people care about is gaining followers and if they are not really there and only promote all the time, it comes across as not authentic and it seems your only after one thing. I don’t want to offend people who schedule tweets all the time, but that is just the way I feel.

When I look at blogs, who are interesting, I look at the person, their personality and their topics. I feel that the true personality only comes across, when you genuinely tweet when you have time and not when you “have to”. It makes a person more real and that makes you relate to them. I also really appreciate when I can talk to bloggers on twitter, I love discussing things with my book blogging girlies and certain guys ;), it’s just so much fun and it doesn’t make you think about competition. Whereas the scheduling tweets is a way to get the attention and get more views than other bloggers. I’m not saying that’s the case for all the bloggers, who do it and most of them are also really active and talking to people, but that’s the way it comes across to me.

I tried scheduling Instagram promotions for a few days in a row and yes, I might have gained some followers, but it just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

For me blogging is also about staying true to yourself, being confident and and not changing who you are. That includes tweeting when I have time to tweet, so no scheduling. I want to show the real “ME” to me followers, so I tweet whenever I can and if I don’t have the time, I don’t have the time, that’s life!

You might ask, why I schedule my posts then?! Well, it’s simple: If I have a post planned for the day, I want it to go up in the morning, so readers, wherever in the world can read them. Scheduling a single post is also way easier and not as time consuming as scheduling tweets.

In the beginning I used to be obsessed with my following numbers, but know I’m just happy people read and enjoy my blog. The number doesn’t matter, that’s why there are also times, when I don’t blog , because I’m busy or on a holiday. Full time bloggers always say they work on a holiday. Well, you make it work, why not just enjoying the time and doing blog related things, while your back, you also deserve the time to relax and forget about daily life.