There's quite a gap between planning the seemingly perfect marketing strategy and having it actually deliver the expected results — budgets can be off, clients might change their minds, your team may hit bottlenecks, or you've got so much content to post you can't...
How to Schedule Tweets for Free (the Easy Way)
Maybe you’re managing a Twitter profile for a business or organization and want to ensure that your tweets are spaced out evenly throughout the day. Or perhaps you’re planning for a big event and want to ensure that your followers don’t miss any of your updates. Scheduling tweets ensures your content is timely and relevant, even if you cannot be on Twitter 24/7.
There are 2 ways to schedule new Tweets easily:
- natively, with the built-in Twitter scheduler
- via a third-party scheduling tool like Planable
In this article, we’ll explore the pros and cons of each scheduling option.
How to schedule Tweets natively on Twitter
Follow these steps to schedule tweets using the built-in Twitter scheduler:
- Open Twitter and click the blue “Post” button from the menu on the left.
- Type your tweet copy, set your audience, add images, gifs or hashtags.
- Click the schedule icon at the bottom of the composer (near the emoji icon).
- Select the date and time for your tweet, click Confirm, then click Schedule.
To view scheduled tweets on Twitter: click the left-side blue “Tweet” button, click Unsent Tweets and select the Scheduled tab. This is also where you can edit or delete any scheduled Tweets.
Unsent Tweets is also where you can edit or delete any scheduled Tweets.
How to schedule Tweets with Planable
Planable is a free social media management tool that makes your life easier and frees up your time. Scheduling posts (for Twitter and 8 other platforms) has never been this easy.
Here’s how to schedule Tweets with Planable:
1. Sign up for free: you don’t need a credit card to create an account.
2. Connect your Twitter page (and any other social media platforms you want to schedule posts to).
3. From your workspace, click the Compose button and select the Twitter tab.
4. Write your copy, add images and click Select Date and Time to choose your ideal posting time from the drop-down menu.
5. Click Schedule.
Voilá! You can now enjoy your free time!
Planable’s Pro Plan allows unlimited Twitter publishing. Sign up for a free trial to test all functionalities.
Scheduling Twitter posts with Planable vs. scheduling natively
Planable is a scheduling tool that allows you to plan all your tweets over multiple Twitter accounts you manage in one place (plus manage 8 other social media platforms). With Planable, you can easily plan, preview, and schedule your Twitter posts in advance.
- Schedule Recurring Tweets
To be successful on Twitter, you need to be consistent with your tweeting. That means tweeting regularly and often, which can be hard to do if you’re busy running a business. Scheduled Tweets can help you ensure that your Twitter account is active even when you’re too busy to tweet.
- Plan an entire month’s worth of Twitter posts
Planable’s calendar view feature is invaluable when scheduling multiple tweets across multiple accounts or even different social media platforms. in Planable, you instantly get pixel-perfect previews of your tweets: what you see is what you get.
Planable’s Twitter scheduler drag-and-drop design is perfect for quick decision-making and last-minute changes. Need to squeeze Mark’s brilliant Twitter idea into your busy calendar? No problem. Just drag and drop David’s campaign tweet to another week. That took just a few seconds. Buh-bye, time-consuming planning in Google sheets!
- Bulk schedule tweets
With Planable, you can upload a CSV file to schedule multiple tweets simultaneously. Use the content calendar (monthly or weekly view) to pinpoint gaps in your content. Congratulations, your entire month is planned out! Other teams need days of planning and fiddling with spreadsheets to pull that off.
- Optimal times
If you manage multiple Twitter accounts, it can be hard to keep track of the optimal times for each audience. Planable makes this hassle a thing of the past with the timetable option. Select a specific date you want to have at your fingertips at all times and say goodbye to remembering time zones by heart.
- Collaborate and approve
Easily collaborate with your content writer, designer, or manager to avoid typos and branding errors. Planable makes it easy for the whole social media team to work together in a single dashboard to plan and approve Tweets months ahead.
Mastering Twitter’s economy of language means planning and collaborating. Most importantly, it’s a team effort. Planable was designed from the ground up with collaboration and approval in mind. There’s no option for editing posts on Twitter, which makes teamwork and collaboration even more important.
- Twitter ads
Scheduling Twitter ads (formerly known as Promoted tweets) is only possible via Twitter’s ad platform.
How to schedule tweets on a mobile device
There is no option to schedule tweets on mobile devices using the Twitter app at the moment.
However, you can schedule tweets on your iPhone or Android device with social media tools.
Here’s how you can schedule Twitter posts on your phone with Planable:
1. Sign up for Planable (no credit card required) and connect to your Twitter account on your desktop.
2. Download the Planable app from the App Store or Google Play.
3. Select your Twitter page and tap the Compose button at the bottom of the screen.
4. Write your tweet and tap Next to Select the date and time.
5. Choose the desired date and time and tap Schedule.
You’re all done! Your scheduled tweet will automatically go live when the time comes!
Why schedule Tweets ahead of time?
Why should you care about scheduling posts on Twitter, and why does it matter for your business? Glad you asked!
- You can save time and maintain consistency.
Automate your social media sharing to free up the time you spend posting manually. With a Twitter scheduling tool like Planable (or a Hootsuite alternative), you can spend a few minutes each day (or week) creating tweets and then set them to go out automatically.
When you schedule and publish tweets in advance, you can ensure that your social media presence is consistent, even if you’re busy or taking a break.
- You can reach a wider audience and test out different strategies.
Scheduling your posts for different time zones can help you reach a larger global audience since people are active at different times. Take advantage of peak times in each time zone to get more engagement and reach, and ensure your message gets out at the right time.
Scheduling posts in advance allows you to experiment with different types of Twitter posts and frequencies to see what works best for your audience.
- You can better promote your content.
Twitter is a fast-moving platform where tweets can quickly get buried in people’s timelines. But if you schedule your tweets ahead of time, you can time them to go out when more people are likely to see them.
You can schedule tweets to go out whenever you publish a new blog post on your blog. This way, your followers will always know when there’s new content to check out.
- You can set up recurring tweets.
Have a message that you want to make sure people see? You can schedule multiple tweets to repeat at regular intervals. This way, even if someone misses your scheduled tweet the first time, they’ll see it the next time it goes out as a recurring post.
If you’re not using a Twitter scheduling tool, you’re at the mercy of the Twitter algorithm. But if you schedule your Tweets, you have more control over when they go out and how often they’re seen.
Scheduling Tweets best practices
Maintain a steady Twitter post flow
Twitter is all about engagement, so if you go too long without tweeting, your followers may start to forget about you. It would be best if you were tweeting regularly, even when you’re not scheduled to post anything. Strike a balance with an organic tweet you send out on the spot every other day.
Don’t fall to the other extreme and over-schedule your tweets, either. If you schedule every new Tweet in advance, it will look like you’re not present on Twitter. Try to leave some room for spontaneity and live-tweeting events as they happen.
With a bit of planning, you can use tweet scheduling to your advantage and make sure that your Twitter presence is always strong.
Create branding guidelines
All scheduled tweets should follow your branding guidelines. A brand book usually includes branded hashtags, emojis, link usage, replying etiquette, etc. All of these make your brand instantly recognizable to your audience.
Optimize your Twitter presence
Scheduling tweets can be a great way to ensure that your content is always relevant and timely. Remember to keep up with your regular tweeting habits, and don’t over-schedule tweets.
If you want to be proactive, pay attention to your overall Twitter footprint. This involves filling out your bio and description, having an engaging cover and profile photos, replying to tweets, and retweeting interesting posts. A Twitter management tool can make all of these tasks easier.
Don’t hesitate to use a content calendar
Social media calendars are great for keeping track of campaigns and maintaining a constant presence on social media. Planable offers a great calendar that will help you do just that.
Build a consistent Twitter personality
Twitter is the social media version of Seinfeld — we all want to be Kramer (Wendy’s), but deep down, we’re George. This is why building an original personality around your brand is important.
Tweet about industry events
But don’t just tweet about them. Ask for details and insights from your audience. It will make your followers feel like you’re engaging. And it’s a great way to network with relevant parties.
Mix things up
Maintaining a consistent social media persona is important, sure. Still, too much of the same thing can get boring very quickly. Experiment with different variations of hashtags, visuals, and text. If a particular format works, double down on experimentation and try to push it to its absolute limit.
Use a simple handle
Complicated handles do nothing but annoy and frustrate people who want to reach out directly to you.
Be ready to engage at all times
Twitter was built with dynamic micro conversations in mind. Nowadays, customers prefer to reach out to brands and businesses directly through social media rather than traditional communication channels (email or phone). Take advantage of the various Twitter features at your disposal, like the “Pin tweet” feature.
Ready to schedule Tweets 6 times faster?
6X is as visually appealing a number as it is accurate. A reasonable amount of math was done to reach that number. Planable customers save up to 30 hours a month with Planable, basically freeing up almost a week’s worth of work for stuff that actually matters (spoiler alert: creating content). Or any other activity. It’s all up to you.
Scheduling tweets can be a helpful way to make sure your Twitter account is active and engaging, even when you’re busy. It can also help you save time, tweet at peak times, and promote your content effectively. If you’re not already using a Twitter scheduling tool, now is the time to try it.