Photo by Jeff Turner (Flickr)

I ran into an interesting occurrence this past month. Just as I thought I was getting into the flow with Twitter, you know, by initiating conversation, getting retweeted and meeting new users, I get overloaded with work.

Staying alive on Twitter was the unfortunate casualty and all momentum I had on it was lost. The truth is that you can avoid this and stay active on Twitter without sacrificing your time working.

It only takes some time management and time-saving ways to use it. Let me show you the ways.

Just converse and retweet

There will always be days where you don’t have time to check the reader and read the blogs. No problem. There’s no law saying you absolutely have to send out links during a session.

Catch up with followers just with a simple “Hey, how are you?” or respond to the casual tweet with another one.

Then check out the links by other users and retweet the ones you like with a short comment.

While you don’t want to make sending only retweets and chats a habit, these are great ways to get a number of tweets out when time is lacking for you.

Repeat the tweets

Reduced time on Twitter means you aren’t able to tweet as much. It doesn’t mean you can’t repeat the tweets you already sent. This is even common practice among top twitter users which increases the chance your tweets get read.

To really save time on this, though, copy the tweet you are about to send, then utilize Twaitter to schedule that same tweet at a later time of the day. Double the tweets in half the time.

One note is that you should stick to your own tweets to repeat rather than retweets. You stand to lose some originality otherwise.

Break up Twitter sessions into small time slots during the day

I had made the mistake of thinking that, if I want to get anything done, I had to cut off the Twitter usage and get to work. But even on the busiest days, you can still afford to spend fifteen minutes here or there to catch up with followers and maybe hit out a few links.

This works best if you schedule these tiny blocks of time after working few hours just to break the monotony. You’ll be surprised at how much you can tweet in such short time periods.

Jump on at your “peak” times of the day

Some of you may be the chatty type (if so, you can skip this) but, if you are like me, Twitter is hard when you’re tired and have nothing to say.

There is no sense then, really, to be on Twitter when all you’ll manage is a couple of boring tweets. Save it for a time when you’re in a good mood, energetic and want to talk to people. It makes it much easier, plus tweets really do reflect your mood.

Don’t worry over missed days

When I missed a day here or there while tackling the work I had, I thought I was missing out and my followers would forget about me. In other words, I assumed my followers had an expectation of me being around consistently.

Twitter isn’t a job and you don’t have to catch up the next day with double the tweets if you happen to miss a day. We all have work, dentist appointments and trips to the hospital to take care of.

Your users will happily be there when you get back.

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Have any other time-saving ways to use Twitter? Feel free to leave them in a comment below.

More on the author, Johnny Spence
Johnny is the founder of The Freelance Rant and a freelance web programmer with 8 years in the business. Have a visit at his company Oscarrr!web or see what he's up to on Twitter.

And while we're on the subject...

• Ten Steps To Twitter Zen
• Introducing A New Sort-Of Twitter (More Than 140 Characters Allowed!)
• Top Ten Things To Do When Twitter Is Down