How Often Should I Update my Twitter account?

The biggest investment you are going to make in social media will probably be time.

If you're like me, it is your time you are investing.

Some companies actually pay people to update, post, and tweet, but most of the activity is done as an added responsibility, not as a dedicated, full time position.

So, how often?

Depends on what you are wanting to accomplish.

Social Media is best used as a two way communication tool. On Facebook and Twitter, the length of time an update or tweet appears on your recipients Facebook or Twitter stream depends on how many friends they have or people they are following.

Let's talk about Twitter:

Follow a lot of people and those tweets will go zipping by. So it is helpful to know how many people your followers are following.

Taking a glance at the my followers, they follow as few as 17 people to as many as 138,000. Most are between 200 and 2000.

95% of the people on Twitter have less than 500 Twitter friends. And not everyone is going to see your tweet when you send it. You may have to send it more than once over a period of time.

Instead of over-tweeting, the problem I see more often is under-tweeting.

Anything less than once a day is definitely under-tweeting. My average is between 25 and 30 tweets per day which includes retweets, conversations, and links.

If you have a limited time to tweet, my suggestion would be to do it at the same time each day. Perhaps every morning between 7 and 7:30 is your Twitter time. Be consistent and your friends and followers will know what to expect from you.

With more and more of us carrying smartphones, we have more access to Twitter during the day, so if someone mentions me I can see that within a few hours as I go about my other daily duties and can respond.

Tomorrow, we'll continue the How Often subject with some thoughts on blogs and touch on Facebook a bit more too.

Your comments are always welcome.