Would you like to tweet more often, but seem to lack the necessary time to do so? Do you get sick or do your kids get sick and a day or two goes by without much work getting done? Do you go on vacation? If so, then you may want to take advantage of a few Twitter tools which allow you to schedule your tweets. Our two favorite Twitter tools are TweetDeck and HootSuite, with our absolutely favorite being TweetDeck. By using Twitter tools like TweetDeck and HootSuite, you can be more efficient with your time on Twitter.
When it comes to being successful at using Twitter for business, one of the many keys is being consistent. People like to see that you tweet regularly. Now, as most of us business owners know, it’s tough to Tweet regularly when you’re running your business. One way to solve this dilemma is to use TweetDeck or HootSuite. By using one of these tools to schedule your tweets you will be able to spend less time on Twitter, while being more effective. We recommend that unless you’re going away for days (ie. vacation, conference, etc.) that you don’t schedule your tweets more than a day or so in the future. We also recommend that even if you have scheduled tweets for the next day, if you find time during that day, it’s still a GREAT idea to send out some live tweets as well. This combination approach allows you to get more tweets out, while still keeping your information relevant.
You can even schedule your ReTweets of others to go out in the future. If you are on Twitter and you’re reading a few great tweets, you don’t have to ReTweet them all at once, you can schedule them to go out throughout the day. This will provide you with a consistent stream of tweets without reverting to using some of the more automated Twitter software. There’s still a manual component and a personal touch involved when scheduling your tweets this way.
Another great time to schedule your tweets is when you want to ReTweet one of your ReTweets 
Stay with me now… A few months back we wrote an article entitled, “Be Sure to Thank your ReTweeter”, and in the article we talked about how you can include your original tweet in your ‘Thank You’ tweet. Be sure to go read the full article, but basically here’s how it breaks down:
If you tweet a link to your blog and someone ReTweets it then you should thank them, as they put their name behind your tweet and put your tweet in front of their followers. What’s even better is that when you thank them instead of just saying “Thank You”, you can ReTweet THEIR ReTweet of your article. This gets your article back in front of your followers (instead of just a Tweet saying “Thank you” or “Thanks for the ReTweet”). Now take that one step further, if multiple people ReTweet your article, instead of thanking them all at once, you can thank them individually and schedule each of those tweets to go out in the future. In between each of those ‘Thank you’ tweets you should post other content so that your Twitter account isn’t full of that same ‘Thank you’ tweet. Basically this allows you to (all at once) schedule a few ‘Thank you’ tweets that will go out over time (which gives more of your followers an opportunity to see the tweet), and you don’t have to keep coming back into your Twitter account to do it. This technique (as long as it’s not abused) is a great way to drive more traffic from Twitter to your website or blog. All of it made possible through Twitter Tools like TweetDeck and HootSuite.
TweetDeck is a social media browser. It allows users to manage their social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace. If you’re using Twitter for business, you can use TweetDeck to manage your efforts. We use TweetDeck to manage 
Through TweetDeck, users can type or paste a full URL into the Twitter text input area and TweetDeck, through it’s integration with bit.ly (or other URL shorteners) will automatically turn your link into a short url. No more copying the URL that you want to share on Twitter, navigating to http://bit.ly in your web browser, pasting the URL into the URL input area, and then copying/pasting your short url into Twitter. Now, simply copy/paste your full URL into TweetDeck and everything is done for you.
Another thing that’s great about TweetDeck is that you can use it on your mobile phone. Downloading TweetDeck for your mobile phone is free and really easy. TweetDeck is still evolving and definitely has its limitations. With that said, it’s one of the better Twitter management tools out there. Like other online social tools, TweetDeck will continue to evolve as user needs change. Definitely consider using TweetDeck to make communicating with customers and prospects on Twitter more manageable. 
