Would it not be amazing if you could prepare a large number of tweets and have them posted to twitter gradually – a few every day? What about if that same method improved reputation management and SEO too while allowing you to reach another audience segment.

There are tools that can do some of these things but there is an often overlooked social media site that does them all.

It is especially helpful if you core readership is likely to include a teenage demographic. Even if that is not the case, this one tip can do a lot of work for you while you are doing something else.

I should add that this is not the only way to schedule content to Twitter. It remains to be seen if it is a good idea to make this your primary way to schedule content, but it does work and it is effective.

What you will need

An active Twitter account. If you follow this plan, your Twitter account will get updates from you posted throughout the day. You will need to be logged in to your Twitter account.

Ideally, you should already have a blog with a reasonable amount of content on it.

Lastly, it may be worth coming up with a series of interesting open ended questions. these should be tightly targeted to the topics you discuss on your Twitter account.

What’s the secret?

There is no secret. You will simply need to log into your Tumblr account if you have it or make one if you do not. If you are yet to discover Tumblr it is a niche blogging community with a lot of writers, young people, and fans of various shows sharing stuff they love.

If you followed my guide to online reputation management, you may have already created a Tumblr account for your author name or a pen name. Use this.

I will write a separate guide to getting the most out of Tumblr. For now, just make sure your Twitter account is connected to your Tumblr blog.

Now for the good bit

Tumblr has something it calls the queue. You can set your queue to publish a set number of posts each day. It will space these out between the hours your specify.

Tumblr will also update your twitter account when it publishes a new item. This is what we are counting on.

I recommend alternating between your interesting discussion starters, and links to your blog posts. If you have interesting pictures, or other content your fans may enjoy, mix that in too. Pick four or five relivant tags.

Tumblr has a link type post format, that takes care of presenting your post nicely for you. Either way, you can check the Twitter text before you drop the post into the queue. You can add hash tags here, if you wish.

For discussion starters, I found it works well to post these as a text post with only the heading filled out (unless you wish to expand on your point).

Now not only can you set a stream of content for your Twitter account for weeks or even months in advice, but you have a whole other platform where you can build a following. All for a few hours work, once a week.

I find this is a good way to give older but still relevant posts a new lease of life.

Minimal maintenance

The only thing you will need to do to keep it running is log back in once or twice a week and top up your queue. However, it is worth checking your reactions (notes in Tumblr terms).

You may have started a debate or have interesting replies. These are worth joining in with – or at least replying to.

You may also find other users have reblogged your questions and added something of their own. Why not return the favour and keep the thread going. It is up to you if you schedule this in the queue or publish right away. It is also worth considering if you want to alert Twitter or keep this as Tumblr only.

If you remain civil, friendly, and interesting, you are likely to collect a nice following over time.

Take questions

Once you start to explore Tumblr you will find other authors there too. For example, Neil Gaiman is on there. Many of them use Tumblr’s “ask” feature to answer questions from readers and fans. Once you have a following, why not allow people to ask you questions?

Asks, as they are called, are a popular part of the Tumblr culture. Give them a try sometime. You probably want at least a couple of hundred followers before you get them with any regularity.

I prefer to leave most asks as Tumblr only content. However, how you handle them is up to you.