Repeat Performances Earn Applause On Twitter

Let’s talk about at an open secret – it’s perfectly acceptable to tweet your own stuff on Twitter. Everybody does it. It’s frowned upon on Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Stumbleupon and pretty much everywhere else, but on Twitter it’s fine.

Something most people don’t know – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with tweeting the same content more than once. Even within the same 24-hour period.

Here’s the thing – Twitter is popular all around the planet. Some people are getting up and connecting to the internet in one part of the world while others are logging off for the night. (This actually happens several times a day).

Amongst all of this, they’re finding time for Twitter. Their time.

The problem is: what if your time is different?

Let’s break up the world into three main time-zones – Europe, Asia and the USA.

1. If you’re based in Western Europe, your morning tweets are going to be unseen by most Americans, and your evening tweets by most Asians
2. If you’re based in the USA, certainly the West Coast, your morning tweets are going to be unseen by many Asians, and your late-evening tweets by most Europeans
3. If you’re based in Asia, your morning tweets are going to be unseen by most Europeans, and your evening tweets by many Americans

On top of this, if you consider that at any given time only a small percentage of your network are going to be actually logged on to Twitter and paying attention to you, the chances at any one moment of an individual person actually seeing your stuff is really quite slim.

The solution is simple: you tweet your content twice. Once in the morning, and once in the evening. On your clock. We like the idea that everybody is going back and scanning through our timelines, but that doesn’t really happen all that much.

So why not say it twice?

Of course, your content has to be good. It has to be worth repeating. I’m not for a second proposing you regurgitate garbage or that you spam your stream with the same tweet 20-30 times per day. Twice is more than enough, thank you.

Increasingly I’m realising that many things on Twitter embrace the concept of fair ratio. The ratio of people you’re following to those following you should be no worse than 1:1. In any given day I think that you should strive for tweets that are made up of about 50% content and 50% replies. (This tends to happen by accident.)

The ratio of content you share is a little more extreme. I think something like 9:1 is perfectly reasonable. That is, for every nine external links you share, it’s okay to then include one of your own. There’s some flexibility here, but if all you do is tweet your own content, people will not care.

It’s also worth mentioning that there’s nothing wrong with re-submitting your old stuff, even from weeks and months ago, as long as it remains relevant. I re-share my tutorials on TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop several times each month, and my Twitter 101 section contains a lot of useful information for newcomers. Once any of this becomes dated or redundant, I’ll either change it or stop.

Think about this: your Twitter network is growing each and every week. All those new people are not going to go back and read all of your tweets. Because of this, they are likely missing out on a lot of incredible content that you’ve shared. If it’s still valid, you should think about putting it up again, especially when it’s timely because of a current event or situation.

Few are going to mind. Most won’t even notice. I’ve never had a single complaint about a re-submitted link. Indeed, you’d be amazed at how often people who have been in your network for months will have missed something important or useful that you shared on several occasions. Just because Twitter is a real-time network doesn’t mean that everything is out-of-date as soon as it has scrolled off the screen.

Don’t run riot, don’t take the piss, and don’t be an A-hole about it. If your ideas are strong, and you’ve earned the trust and respect of your network, re-submitting your best content is a win for everybody. Including you.

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