I don't know why people think that tweeting out a link every couple minutes is acceptable, but a lot of people do it. It's kind of painful to see people doing this because they are probably getting no returns from it and it's probably annoying the hell out of their followers. Plus, when your feed is filled with nothing but links it's pretty easy to see that you're not engaging with anyone, but you're just there to push your product. I mean, you are on social media to push your product, but you can't do it by spamming.
There is a way where you can put out less social media updates, and get more returns ... here's how.
1. Find Out When Your Following Is Most Active
Finding out when your following is most active allows you to build a schedule, and send out tweets at times when they are most likely to bring results (traffic, leads, etc.). Not only that, once you find out when your following is most active you won't be sending out tweets mindlessly at all hours of the day.
There's plenty of free tools out there that will analyze your twitter account. Here's the ones I recommend checking out:
Tweriod will provide you very specific times when your following is most active, but in general most people are active online when they first wake up, during lunch hours, and almost right after work. Just use the tools above to try to get a basic understanding of when your following is active, so you can do the next step.
2. Create a Schedule
Creating a schedule makes things a lot easier. When you have a schedule, you can set up social media updates/tweets days in advance and target times when your following is most likely to engage.
BufferAPP makes it pretty easy to manage multiple schedules, and track stuff so check them out, but keep in mind that it does have limitations unless you pay.
Use the reports from above to generate a schedule for the week. If you want to experiment with multiple schedules, the BufferApp allows you to do that if you have the "Awesome" plan.
3. Track and Adapt
BufferAPP has analytics built right in, but if you decide not to use Buffer, then at least use Bit.ly or Goo.gl to track the clicks that your links get. You're a business, so you need to be tracking stats to see if your time is being spent correctly. Time is money ... don't waste it.
But really you need to keep track of how things are going so that you can adapt, and change your schedule as your following grows. It'll also help you get an idea of what your following is most interested in, so you can "optimize" your tweets even more.
Just remember to track and adapt.
4. Start to Engage
Once you've developed your schedule, you can now start to spend a little time communicating with your customers. Even though you are posting less links you're still spamming if that's all you do. Make sure that some of your twitter account is communicating with your customers, and not just links to your own stuff.
Conclusion
If you're one of the businesses who are sending out tweets every minute, then please stop. It's really annoying considering you don't have to be sending out so many tweets to get good results. Studying your following, and optimizing your tweet times is the best thing you can do. It'll save both you and your followers some frustration, and you will actually get the results you expect from social media.
So, have you developed your schedule?
