[:en]By Dominick Sirianni, Podcast Lead for the Internet Marketing Association

In my interview with marketing expert Christoph Trappe, he shared valuable advice for using Twitter to grow and engage your audience. Christoph was one of the ‘100 Most Influential Marketers’ at the Content Marketing World Conference last year and he admits that fully leveraging social media requires using automation tools.

One effective way to improve your impact on Twitter is to use platforms that to schedule tweets ahead of time. Effectively implementing this strategy is how Trappe and others take their game to the next level.

Increased Engagement

As a frequent presenter, Trappe has developed skills to increase engagement both with the audience in the room and those following him on Twitter. In addition to putting your handle on every slide of your presentation, schedule tweets to be released at different intervals during the talk. Today, many people in the room will be tweeting out some of the points you are making. By communicating your thoughts both verbally and via Twitter, you can drastically increase your communication. It’s a force multiplier that gets more people hearing what you are saying and brings the message out to a larger Twitter audience. Presentation attendees and Twitter users love being able to engage in real-time. Discussing the message online while it is being shared in-person increases retweets, favorites, comments, and follows.

Time Management

It’s doubtful you have time to tweet every hour throughout the day with original content, and even if you did, that’s not how you’d want to spend your time. Using a tool that lets you write and schedule tweets for a future date or time allows you to batch your work and ‘drip’ it out for optimal delivery.

Then, when you’re logged into Twitter, you’re spending time engaging with your audience through replies and retweets rather than focusing on creating new content. Remember, it’s the engagement that matters so the more time you spend reading and commenting on things others have written, the larger your reach.

Here are just a few successful companies using a Twitter scheduling tool:

Analytics

What gets measured, gets managed. Twitter scheduling tools track the social reach of your tweets and their resulting engagement metrics via built-in analytics.

Tools let you quickly see which tweets produce the most retweets and favorites. You can also determine what days and times you’re most likely to be heard. Use this information to become more effective.

3 Tried and Tested Twitter Scheduling Tools

Here are a few tools we use to maximize our impact on Twitter. Test them out and let me know what you find.

1. Buffer (Free or Premium options)

Signing up is quick and painless. You are immediately prompted to write a tweet to be scheduled and a wizard walks you through some suggestions. The dashboard helps you easily manage your tweet queue and gives you important analytics.

Favorite Feature: Hand-picked, pre-composed tweets are available for inspiration or to combat a case of writer’s block.

Bonus: You can also connect your Facebook, LinkedIn, App.net, and Google+ accounts.

2. Hootsuite (Free, Pro, or Enterprise options)

Getting Hootsuite up and running is easy and expedient. Link your account, set up your content stream, and schedule your first message.

The quick tour covers the toolbar and shows the benefits of setting up your streams and tabs to monitor your social activity.

Favorite Feature: You can create “@mentions,” “retweets,” and “sent” streams to quickly see who’s interested in your content. This really helps you spend your time on Twitter interacting with your followers rather than shooting blind.

Bonus: You can also connect your Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Google+ accounts.

3. SproutSocial (Deluxe, Premium, or Team options)

This social media management tool is not free but does have a free 30-day free trial. Inside you can favorite, retweet, and respond to direct messages. You can even assign tasks for yourself or other team members.

Favorite Feature: Their reports are clean and actionable with insights on interactions, unique users, impressions, audience demographics, and more.

Bonus: You can also connect your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts.

Conclusion

Using a scheduling platform for Twitter is not compulsory but it’s a great way to level up the amount of value you’re getting from your time on social media. Remember, the biggest brands in the world do this. Why not you and your company?

Have you used Twitter scheduling tools before? We’d love to hear about it in the comments or on Twitter![:]