Tech how-to: Schedule tweets without any extra programs or downloads

Tech how-to: Schedule tweets without any extra programs or downloads
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If you regularly tweet for work or for fun, you may be using a site like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule out your tweets in advance. Did you know, though, that Twitter also offers ways to schedule your tweets — and you can do so right from the social media platform?

That’s right; Twitter will allow you to schedule content well ahead of time and it won’t take a third-party platform to do it. Tweet scheduling is a hidden feature that isn’t well-publicized, but it’s worth familiarizing yourself with, as it can be super handy if you’re trying to make sure that you’ve got content cycling through your account on a regular basis. RELATED: Delete your social media search history.

Want to learn how to schedule your tweets in advance through the Twitter platform? Let’s take a look at how this hidden feature works.

How (and why) to schedule tweets through Twitter

There are plenty of reasons to schedule tweets in advance, but the most common is for businesses or social media influencers to remain in constant contact with their audiences. There’s no magic number of tweets you should send out each day, but as a business, it’s important to have fresh, relevant content flowing through your social media channels.

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Doing this helps you to maintain communication with your target audience, but in order to have fresh content flowing through your social media accounts, you either have to sit on social media and tweet constantly or schedule it in advance. Most opt for the latter and use a third-party option like the ones mentioned above.

But why do that when you can schedule out your tweets directly from Twitter instead? It’s simple to do directly from the Twitter ads campaign dashboard. You’ll need to set up an account at ads.twitter.com if you don’t already have one, but that’s pretty easy to do — and you don’t have to be a business to do so.

Note: In addition to your Twitter login info, you’ll also need to have a credit card on hand to set up your account in the ads campaign dashboard. This service is free — you don’t have to use that card to pay for ads or other Twitter offerings — but it will require you to input card information to set up an account.

Once your account is set up, you can start to schedule tweets from this dashboard.

To schedule tweets:

  • Head over to ads.twitter.com and sign in
  • Once you have logged in, scroll to Creative > Tweets and click on Tweets
  • While in the Tweets tab, you can compose and schedule organic tweets or schedule promoted tweets if you want to run a campaign (promoted tweets are what costs you money in the platform)

It’s that simple. This feature is primarily meant for business use, but again, you don’t have to be a business to take advantage of it. You can use the ads.twitter.com dashboard to schedule tweets, updates, and other content for your personal account, too.

There is one downside to this feature, though. While you can schedule tweets from the desktop or mobile Twitter site, you cannot use this feature on the app. So if you want to schedule tweets via the ads.twitter.com dashboard, you’ll have to use your browser on desktop or mobile.

Other options

Using the ads.twitter.com dashboard is the most direct way to schedule tweets, but you can also opt to use one of the third-party options like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, which is owned by Twitter. Hootsuite will allow you to schedule out content for a ton of different social media channels — LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. — while Tweetdeck only allows you to schedule out Twitter posts.

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Both are pretty decent alternatives to the ads.twitter.com dashboard, but you’ll have to pay to access some of the premium features available from Hootsuite. Tweetdeck, on the other hand, is a free tool, but like with the ads.twitter.com dashboard, it can only be used via your desktop or mobile browser.

Tags: business, communication, content, desktop, downloads, Facebook, influencers, mobile, scheduling, social media, target audience, X (Twitter)