Tweeting too much… or not enough

Today, I received an e-mail from someone saying that they are no longer following @hmarketinghelp because I update too frequently. At the same time, I have Twitter power users with more than 30,000 followers encouraging me to update more frequently…using automated tools if needed.

Which advice do I follow? More importantly, how frequently should your hotel update its Twitter account?

There are a few things to understand here. The less followers you have, the more common it is for one of the people you’re following to dominate your updates page. I know this happened to me.

Once you start getting more followers, this is less of an issue. Sure, there are spam accounts that churn out new updates every few minutes — around the clock — but those are pretty easy to detect and remove. Additionally, Twitter power users often use software such as TweetDeck and HootSuite to monitor specific terms and search queries — or follow their favorite users.

I think some common sense is useful here:

• If you have something worth saying, say it.
• If you have something particularly important, feel free to re-tweet it several times during the day (day parting).

I often do 3 to 5 updates in rapid succession several times a day. I think this is a natural way to update your account. As long as you’re not making 50 updates all at once in a five-minute minute session, most people don’t mind.

What do you think? How often do you update twitter? What do you think is the best update frequency?