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.

The problem is that I find Twitter a distraction as well as a useful source of information and humour. And I find that I end up tweeting a lot more than I need to, when I should be focusing on other work. It reminds me of being at junior school when I used to talk to my friends in class. We’d try to be discreet and quiet but then we’d get caught and the teacher would shout at us. If Twitter is like the group of friends from my class then where is the teacher? Where is the person telling me to stop chattering and get to work?

I’m an adult. And a freelancer. I have no teacher to shout at me.

Am I going mad? Am I turning into one of those internet junkies you read about?

It is time for intervention! A few people have advised me to schedule my Twitter time and close TweetDeck when I’m not in ‘Tweet time’. But what about all my loyal fans who I arrogantly assume would wither away and die if I rationed my tweets too much? Is it time to engage in scheduled tweeting à la Rebecca Woodhead?

The SMC account thrives on interaction. I like to talk to our followers, share jokes, make useful RTs and so on…how will scheduled tweets work with this? Of course, the only way to find out is to give it a go. The latest version of TweetDeck has finally got it’s scheduled tweet capability working so there’s nothing holding me back! Next week there will be a mix of scheduled and normal tweets from the SMC account. I shall assign half an hour in the morning and half an hour at the end of the day to genuine tweeting time. In the middle there’ll be one or two scheduled announcements or witticisms (hopefully).

I’ll let you all know how it gets on but we’re keen to hear your perspective too. If you like the new approach (or if you hate it) then let us know!