Twitter can seem overwhelming when you are strapped for time with other obligations. And the fact that the university’s @DukeU account tweets between 10-30 times in per day is probably pretty intimidating.

But Twitter might still be worth pursuing. The truth is you won’t offend your audiences or lose your followers because you haven’t tweeted in the last hour (or even the last couple of days).

Although it is acceptable to tweet dozens of times a day like the New York Times, it is definitely not a requirement. In fact, it’s better to tweet just a couple of interesting pieces of content than to bombard your followers with content they don’t want to see. (That’s when you may be unfollowed.)

For those of you who are still testing the waters, you should know another tip: you can tweet the same thing more than once. In fact, if your content is interesting and relevant, you should tweet it multiple times because it’s likely that not all of your followers will see it the first or second time around.

A couple of ways to make sure followers don’t tire of seeing the same thing over and over again:

• Frame the content in different ways. Maybe you cite an interesting quote in one tweet. Maybe you deliver the salient takeaway the next time. Maybe you include an image in another tweet.
• Try the tweet at different times during the day. Different people tend to be online at 7:30 am versus at 9:00 pm.

You can use this as an opportunity to test the way you present your content. You may see patterns emerge that teach you what your followers like the most. For example, they may be more responsive to tweets with images, or tweets framed as questions. Let us know what you find out!

Remember that you can always tweet us your questions at @DukeU or using #DukeSocial.