It’s the end of my one-week Twitter experiment where I attempted to reign in my obsession by tweeting only for a short period of time in the morning and evening. Other tweets were scheduled to publish during the afternoon so that my followers got to read stuff from us without taking me away from my other work.
If you haven’t read about the disastrous first half of the experiment yet you can take a look here.
Thursday – day 4
Things were a lot calmer and as an added bonus I had to go to the library for a couple of hours which made it physically impossible for me to check my Twitter stream. If that statement confuses any of you let me explain – I have no iphone. I was without a laptop. I didn’t even borrow a computer while I was at the library. For a couple of hours I was without any form of electronic amusement or assistance. I wonder how often that happens during the average working week now?
But I digress. The day went as planned in terms of Twitter usage. Finally – a success!
Followers at end of day 4: 289
Cheating: Me? No way!
Friday – day 5
Once again, a strong start to the day until I came to a natural break in my work and realised I had to wait to hear back from somebody else. I didn’t even have a book to read as I finished the latest novel last night and didn’t bring another. As you will see from this post about time management and creativity this is a cardinal sin and a stupid error.
Yep, you’ve guessed it – up pops TweetDeck to save me from the boredom of doing nothing. Or worse, rechecking my to do list and discovering that actually I have work to do that I forgot about! Of course I couldn’t let that happen so it was time for TweetDeck. When I opened it I noticed a scheduled tweet I’d planned that morning announcing this write up so I got on with that.
And lo, I discovered a whole new use for twitter. Setting reminders for yourself via scheduled tweets. Oh yes – I am the master!
Followers at end of day 5: 291
Cheating: *sigh* Yes.
Conclusion:
You may have noticed a lot of cheating going on during the week. Most of it was done to reorganise the café event after our disastrous date cancellation. Some of it was done because I was bored or because I needed to DM someone about café business. At first I took steps to hide my cheating but as the week wore on I stopped. What’s the point in hiding it? I still cheated!
On the plus side, despite a LOT of cheating going on it didn’t seem to cause any major problems between myself and my audience. I did manage to reduce my tweeting time overall and it was less disruptive to my work than it has been in previous weeks. I’ve also gained a few followers and got a few #FFs so I know the experiment hasn’t had a negative impact on our popularity. Would this still be true if I’d managed to complete the experiment without cheating? Well, maybe I’ll try again some other week and let you know.
I’d definitely recommend scheduled tweeting. If you’re too busy to tweet then it’s perfect for keeping your Twitter presence active and so long as you catch up in person later then you won’t be missing out too much. Use a program that allows you to find mentions easily and set up search columns for any #topics you want to follow. Then you’ll always be part of the conversation whenever you log in.