Quick Tips for Avoiding Twitter Burnout
Twitter never stops. All day long, people are Tweeting their hearts out. Keeping up with it all while making sure you’re maintaining the interest of your followers can be overwhelming. If you let it get to you, you’ll get burnt out quickly.
Thankfully, there are some things you can do to avoid Twitter burnout. Start by following these tips, and feel free to add to the list by leaving a comment with your own tips.
- Schedule your Tweets in advance—I know I’ll probably get some flak for this, but I think it’s a good idea to schedule certain types of Tweets in advance (link drops, for example). Doing this will lighten your load, meaning you don’t have to be on Twitter posting updates all day long. Having said that, Twitter is an interactive tool, so you do need to commit time to interacting with your followers. By the way, FutureTweets is a good tool for scheduling your Tweets.
- Limit the number of people you follow—The more people you follow, the more updates you’ll be flooded with. If you’re strapped for time, keeping up with a lot of followers can be almost impossible. Here’s a suggestion: You can use tools like Tweetdeck to create groups and lists that you would like to pay special attention to. This will make it a little easier for you to keep up with the conversation and pay attention to those you are truly interested in.
- Don’t worry about missing out—Unless you plan on doing no work and you can stay up 24/7, you’re going to miss things on Twitter. That’s just how it is. You can’t worry about missing out on key conversations; otherwise, Twitter will consume you. Just get on whenever you can, and make the most of the moments you’re free to use Twitter.
- Take a break—Recently, I took a technology cleanse for a weekend. It’s something I recommend for everyone. We’re just too connected. The Tweets, emails, status updates, and messages just never stop. Take a break and get away from it all for a little while. This will keep you sane, and it will keep you from getting sick of Twitter.
- Don’t get stressed when you lose followers—It’s always important to know when people stop following you. If you lose a large amount of followers, it could be indicative that you’re doing something wrong. However, you will lose followers here and there. That’s just part of being on Twitter. If you’re only occasionally losing followers, don’t get worked up over it. It’s not that big of a deal.
Have you ever dealt with Twitter burnout? How did you overcome it? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
Gerald Weber is blogger social media enthusiast and founder of a local Houston SEO firm.
For scheduling tweets I prefer Hootsuite over any other system. I’m a die hard Hootsuite fan (they should pay me for as much promoting I do for them!).
Good tips….I’m trying to cut back on Twitter a little and actually have a social life….but it’s so hard! 😉
I schedule tweets through TwitterFeed so I can always tweet my favorite blogger’s latest posts automatically shortly after they post them.
As far as following, instead of having to sort through the people you are following and the ones you want to give rid of, I go with Twitter Lists – I watch several in HootSuite and add to them, usually when people are retweeted often by members in my lists.
Another thing I do, especially when I’m on TweetCaster, is favorite tweets I don’t have time to look at but want to come back to. This helps me get a good list of things to read when I’m ready without feeling overwhelmed every time there is something new.
@cliquekaila
I have Hootesuite a try and I never really took to it that much. Then again I think that was shortly after it came out. I think they have developed it some since I’ve last tried it so perhaps I should give it another shot.
I’ve been using Tweetdeck for mmm I guess about a year and a half.
@Kristi,
I like the idea of favoring Tweets to come back and give them full attention later.
I’ve never done the auto tweet my friends blog posts but perhaps that’s not a bad idea. There are certain blogs that I really like that I pretty much tweet all of their posts anyways..
The tech cleanse sounds like a good idea. I can’t actually visualise a weekend without Twitter, Facebook, Email, Reddit, Xbox, Forums, my mobile phone…
Sounds like I need to go camping.
What do you mean “Don’t worry about missing out?” While I was reading this, TweetDeck will have scrolled several tweets down. I might have missed something. Bye, gotta go!
Well well, I think I’ll take a break on twitter,google and others for the weekend 😉
Thanks for those tips. The schedule thing might be the one thing I hadn’t given much thought about.
Nice post ! Thx
I just started unfollowing a dozen of people… and I have to say that I like it !! let’s go on !
You mention Tweetdeck, which a lot of people do love. I’ve never really been a fan though; I just don’t like the feel of it. I do find Twitter’s own lists very helpful though. I can quickly pop from list to list in the browser, and can also easily access my followers list when I need to. If anyone else out there is unimpressed with Tweetdeck, this gives them an easy way to get the main benefits without putting up with the interface.
nice tips, however about the point of not following too many people, i would say sometimes its just a good idea to unfollow some of those that are too talkative, like the image you posted clearly explains. That will be helpful really to weed out the useless updates so that you can concentrate on the ones you need to, also as you said, there is tweetdeck to help out as well,
PS: am visiting your blog for the first time, and here is an honest openion, your black background and white font is hurting my eyes
@Lorne,
I have to say that initially I didn’t like the feel of tweetdeck that much either but it has grown on me.
I definitely agree that the new lists functionality definitely makes utilizing Twitter from the web an easier more organized task. I actually use it that way from time to time.
@directorysieve
You know what? in retrospect I may have misworded that point. Basically what I am meaning is there are ways to focus in on the people that really matter by using tools like tweet deck, creating lists and also unfollowing those that you decide either aren’t that interesting or tweet too much or whatever. Pull the weeds from the garden and focus in on the quality.
i havent gotten twitter burnout just yet! still going strong!
follow me @dxvidbeatz!
Twuffer is another app to schedule tweets in – I find this very useful 😉
I always worried about missing out on something, but now i am used to the fact that twitter is a massive pool of info, you cannot grab each and everything you get your hands on
Some useful tips which actually might be helpful. It’s awlays important to have a break every now and then to refresh.
I use the free twitter app vtb, it incorporates many of the features listed by other commenters in one convenient location, so I don’t have to worry about switching between apps. Plus I can management more than one account, switch between them.
You should sometimes just stay away from the computer. Go outside, mingle with people, eat dinner with a friend, watch your favorite movie. Twitter will be there. There are over 190 million people on tweeter, some are gonna follow and some are gonna unfollow, and you still won’t run out of tweeters.
Having learnt the hard way (good old trial and error) I can confirm that this is good advice!
It took me a while to understand that twitter is a totally transient thing: you can’t follow everything and when it’s gone, it’s gone. My best advice for stress free tweeting is to make the “@Mentions” tab your best friend. I’m amazed at the number of people who overlook this, but it’s the first thing I look at after signing in!
My second top tip is be generous with twitter. I try thank genuine new followers (not always possible due to time constraints), RT tweets that will help promote local businesses (including those that could be seen as the competition) and generally interact with interesting people. If you are generous to others they are more likely to be generous to you. I think this helps avoid twitter isolation and burnout.
Finally, unless you use twitter as a tool to keep in touch with immediate family and friends, or are such a big corporation that you don’t need to follow people, I’d say follow as many people as you can. This is where @Mentions is so valuable. I’ve got to the point where I’m following and building up new followers at a much slower pace than when I first started, but if you don’t put yourself out into twitterverse, you can’t expect people to follow you!
Accepting that you will miss tweets is some of the best advice I’ve heard. As I started to get more and more followers, I found it hard to read every tweet on my timeline. I had to just accept that I will only see the tweets that roll by while I am actually paying attention and miss the rest, unless they @mention me. If you can’t do this, Twitter will consume you.