About a year ago I started a test automating Twitter using dlvr.it. The idea was to bolster my Twitter presence by automating Tweets using posts from two of my favorite sites: 99u and Content Marketing Institute. Nearly every post they put out is great, so I thought why not automatically Tweet them. That’s where dlvr.it came in.

What is dlvr.it?

dlvr.it is a service that works really well and is extremely configurable. Simply plug in a few RSS feeds, schedule how many and how often you want it to post, and then set a destination — in my case, Twitter. After that, any time the feed is updated it queues up the Tweets and posts them per your schedule. Pretty slick.

They also give you numerous metrics on your feeds, click throughs, and more. Again, useful stuff.

Is automating Twitter worth it?

All that said, after about a year of auto-posting 2-5 times Monday through Thursday, I found it didn’t really do a lot for me. My follower count increased 5% from 646 to 680, but most of that was dependent on whether I not I followed the person back (more Twitter automation, this time used by people on the other end).

Don’t get me wrong, dlvr.it worked as advertised and the content was great, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t genuine.

I didn’t like not knowing what’s being posted under my name. Plus people would reply to me about posts I hadn’t read. Not cool.

Time to shut it down

This morning, I turned it off. My Twitter feed will no longer have automated posts from dlvr.it.

Going forward, I’ll only be posting things I’ve read and found interesting.

A new workflow

I’ll still find most of my content through RSS feeds and Twitter directly, but I’ve got a new workflow in place that I’m really excited about.

I’m using the amazing Feedly as my feed reader (available for desktop, iOS and Android), combined with IFTTT and Buffer to share articles I enjoy to Twitter (and LinkedIn).

Yes this post is about me, and generally that’s a bad idea for a blog post, but I’m hoping there’s some stuff in here that can help you (provided you made it this far).

What are your thoughts on automating Twitter (or Facebook or LinkedIn)? Got questions about my workflow or one of the services I mentioned? Let me know in the comments!