How to schedule tweets with Google Calendar

written by Marie

Last updated on: September 30, 2018

Published on August 28, 2017

schedule tweets

Do you have a Twitter account to promote your latest articles? If your answer is yes, then I strongly advise you to continue reading this article – the tips I am about to give you have revolutionized my way of working with Twitter! Scheduling tweets has never been so easy for me! And believe me, I tried many techniques!

From one hour of work on scheduling tweets per week, I’m not down to 15 minutes! It’s super efficient! Do you want to do the same thing as me ?! 😉

The problem with Hootsuite

programmer twitter - hootsuite

I used Hootsuite for a long time to plan all my social media publications. The website is easy to use and efficient, and the free plan have much more features than a free Buffer account. That’s the main reason I chose Hootsuite. However, I soon felt limited! It took 15 minutes per blog post to copy / paste my tweets to spread over 1 year of promotion. It was taking too much time.

The major problem with Hootsuite is that it’s impossible to add recurrence to a tweet. I wanted to be able to publish a tweet every week, or every 2 weeks for a certain period of time. To do this, I had to copy and paste manually my tweet and choose a date as many times as needed. It became very repetitive to do!

 

The solution with Google Calendar and IFTTT

programmer twitter - schedule tweets
 

IFTTT and Google Calendar have fixed this problem!

In the image you see, one event is equal to one tweet that’s going to be published once the event “starts”.

I can now:

  • Change the time or day of my tweets by moving the events
  • Many choices of recurrence for my tweets
  • Visual view of when tweets go live

On IFTTT, I had already tried an applet that used Google Calendar and put the events (tweets) in my “queue” on Buffer. On the other hand, I was very disappointed with this applet, because it only worked 50% of the time. This new solution always works!

 

Related | 7 applets on IFTTT to automate your blogging tasks

 

Step-by-Step Guide to Program Your Tweets on Google Calendar

Create the automation on IFTTT

If you don’t already know IFTTT, start by reading this article I wrote and that will explain how it works.

  1. Go to IFTTT, login on your account and go to this applet.
  2. Click on “Turn on” to enable the automation
  3. Optional: If this is the first time you have connected Twitter and Google Calendar to your IFTTT account, you will be asked to accept permissions. Do it!
    1. Then choose the Gmail account whose calendar you want to use to program your tweets. For my part, I took the email address of my blog : marie@girlknowstech.com.
    2. Click “Allow” to give IFTTT permission to use your calendar
      schedule tweets
    3. Accept the same thing for Twitter!
  4. In the “Keyword or phrase” section, you can leave “ScheduleTweet”. This will be the keyword that will be used as the first word in the title of the event in the calendar, the one that will be the trigger of our automation. (I will explain later, when we’ll get there)
    schedule tweets
  5. In the “Post a tweet” section, leave “Description” as it should be entered by default
    schedule tweets - ifttt description
  6. Click Save, and you have done everything you needed to do on IFTTT!

 

Schedule tweets from Google Calendar

You will have to repeat these steps each time you want to schedule an extra tweet!

  1. Sign in to your Gmail account that is connected to IFTTT (we did this in step 3). If you do not know, you can go to this page to find out what your email address is.
  2. Go to Google Calendar!
  3. Click a time slot where you want to publish a tweet, and choose “Edit Event”
    schedule tweets - google calendar event
  4. Enter the information for the event (or tweet! ;))
    1. Title: The first word must be “ScheduleTweet” since this is what we have determined on IFTTT previously. Then I always write the whole tweet, since this allows me to see at first glance of my calendar what tweet will be published when. Otherwise, we only see “ScheduleTweet” and it does not tell us much!
    2. Description: It’s actually your tweet! So write your tweet and make sure it’s under 140 characters. For my part, I always go on Twitter, write a tweet, and then copy the result into the description field. This way, I make sure that my tweet always respects the maximum number of characters allowed.
      schedule tweets - edit event
    3. If you want the tweet to be done in a recurring way, check the “Repeat” box, this window will open, and you will be able to set the recurrence you want!
      schedule tweets - repeat event
    4. Click on “Done”
  5. Once all the fields are filled for your event, click on the red “Save” button, and you’re done!

 

Conclusion

And here we are, we have completed the steps! I hope these have been clear enough and will help you easily schedule all your tweets from now on! Do not hesitate if you have any question to leave a comment, it is always my pleasure to help you!

If you do not use this technique to program your tweets, tell me in comments, how do you do it !?

Learn how to schedule tweets directly from Google Calendar! Schedule recurrent tweets easily and fast! #twitter #schedule #automation

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31 comments

Kristin August 28, 2017 - 8:33 pm

I currently use Hootsuite but, you’re right, it does take a while to set things out very far. This is a great alternative.

Reply
Marie August 30, 2017 - 9:32 pm

Yes it is! You should try it! 🙂
Marie

Reply
Brianna August 28, 2017 - 8:56 pm

great tips! Thank you for sharing!

Reply
Marie August 30, 2017 - 9:31 pm

I’m glad you like it, Brianna!
Marie

Reply
Miguel August 28, 2017 - 9:21 pm

Wow, I didn’t know that we can schedule a Tweet with Google calendar. Nice share Marie.

Reply
Marie August 30, 2017 - 9:31 pm

Yes, we can! Amazing, right?

Reply
Ashley Idle August 28, 2017 - 9:41 pm

I would have never thought to do this. I’ve bookmarked this post so I can configure it all tomorrow. This is a fantastic post. Thank you!

Ash – caviartastebolognabudget.com

Reply
Marie August 30, 2017 - 9:30 pm

Hi Ash! I’m glad you liked my post! 🙂

Reply
Amber @ xoxo, Am August 28, 2017 - 9:57 pm

I’ll have to try this! I haven’t been consistent with scheduling lol

Reply
Marie August 30, 2017 - 9:30 pm

Yes, you do need to try! It will change your life! You can literally plan your tweets for the next 5 years! haha

Reply
maxine August 29, 2017 - 1:13 am

Love your tutorial! I will bookmark this, once I focus growing my Twitter account I will use it. Thanks

Reply
Marie August 30, 2017 - 9:29 pm

Awesome! Thanks for bookmarking Maxine! 🙂

Reply
Alicia August 29, 2017 - 3:02 am

Ooh this looks brilliant, thanks for sharing!

Reply
Marie August 30, 2017 - 9:28 pm

Hi Alicia, happy to help 🙂

Reply
Amy Rios September 4, 2017 - 12:07 pm

Very informational, thank you! I just started my blog earlier this year and I have been working on promoting it. I had tried hootsuit too and I was not too thrilled with it either. I am very glad to know there is an alternative.

Reply
Marie September 4, 2017 - 1:41 pm

Hi Amy! Happy to help! 🙂 xx

Reply
Bob Mueller September 4, 2017 - 8:18 pm

I’m using MissingLettr to drip-tweet my blog posts. This looks tempting from a tweeting standpoint.

Reply
Marie September 12, 2017 - 8:32 am

Yes it is!
Have a good day, Bob!
Marie

Reply
Marie September 20, 2017 - 7:16 pm

Hey Marie,
Nice tut! I am going to use it right away for my new blog! 🙂
Thanks!

Reply
Marie September 23, 2017 - 1:59 pm

Awesome 😀
Glad to help!

Reply
Umair October 31, 2017 - 9:23 am

ohh thats awesome, i am using ifttt, but didn’t tried tweet with google calendar
let me try this !

Reply
Kamira Gayle November 14, 2017 - 11:23 am

As a newbie I’ve heard about Buffer and Hootsuite but not Google. This is a great alternative to scheduling tweets. Thanks for sharing.

Reply
Marie November 18, 2017 - 9:27 pm

Hi Kamira,
It is a very great alternative: free for as many tweets as you want, and those 2 websites don’t allow you to do recurrent tweets, so you save a lot of time there. 🙂
Marie

Reply
Alexandra Hamer December 7, 2017 - 9:18 am

Hi, how would I add a photo to the tweet? When I try attaching a photo as an attachment, it does not come out on Twitter properly. Thanks!

Reply
Marie December 8, 2017 - 9:09 pm

Hi Alexandra,
I don’t think we can schedule tweets with images for now! 🙁
Marie

Reply
John Woods July 3, 2018 - 2:44 am

Holy $h*+ my life just got easier in the travel biz ! Even I can book my entire year with a solid campaign !
I thought all was lost til I stumbled upon your tutorial…. to be honest it said girlknowstech and I said nah… but then I was like wait just see and soon enough I was very well pleased. I have used iftt before for something in automation, however I plan not to forget this automated system haha ! After all it will forward me in many ways …

Btw do you know if there is a instagram way of doing this ?

Reply
Marie July 13, 2018 - 5:08 pm

Hello,
I don’t think there is an instagram way of doing this.
Have fun with IFTTT
Marie

Reply
Ivaneta Ivanova March 12, 2019 - 11:28 am

I already use IFTTT + GC for my Pinterest scheduling and I’m more than happy to use it for Twitter, too. I’m just starting my Twiter promotion and I’m excited to have a reliable and easy to use way of automating everything. Great post, Thank you!

Reply
Marie May 19, 2019 - 8:53 pm

Hello Ivaneta, I didn’t know you could do something similar for Pinterest scheduling, interesting! 🙂
Happy to help,
Marie

Reply
Rehan March 18, 2019 - 4:48 pm

I usually use twetler.com for my tweets scheduling. I’ll definitely try this. Thank you for sharing!

Reply
Marie April 5, 2019 - 6:46 pm

Hello Rehan! Awesome, I hope you enjoy this new method!
Marie

Reply

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