How to Schedule Retweets to Share at the Perfect Time, Without Ever Flooding Your Followers

This post originally published on May 15, 2013. We’ve updated it here with the latest, newest information, screenshots, and videos.

The retweet function has been a favorite way of ours to give appreciation and acknowledgment to the tweets we love. And we’ve often wondered: What happens when we love a lot of tweets? Or when we find an awesome tweet at an odd hour?

Being able to schedule your retweets gives you an awesome opportunity to show your support and engagement for other people’s tweets—without ever flooding your followers with too much content.

As we built out the Buffer product, the ability to schedule retweets was one item that consistently rose to the top of our feedback forum. And when we brainstormed this feature internally as part of our social media management suite of tools, we wanted to achieve something very unique: The ability to schedule a retweet, no matter which app, web, or mobile client you are using.

We think we’ve found a really great solution to this. Let’s take a look how you can make use of a scheduled retweet.

Here’s a quick video we put together about how the scheduled retweet works.

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How to schedule native retweets from the web

First up is scheduling retweets from the web. This is super easy and works with the click of a button.

The first thing you need is the free Buffer browser extension. It’s available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

The extension lets you quickly schedule and share any page you’re browsing by simply clicking a button (or pressing a keyboard shortcut). It also integrates directly with a number of websites, including Twitter.

The Buffer browser extension adds a Buffer button to each tweet. Now, whenever you are seeing something that’s worth sharing on Twitter, you can simply click the Buffer button to schedule:

It’ll give you the chance to easily schedule the retweet from that Twitter account. Click the Buffer button, and you’ll see your options for adding the retweet to your queue.

You can schedule the retweet for multiple accounts by selecting your chosen accounts from your list:

If you want, you can easily change the tweet to the old school “RT @username: Text of the tweet” format. If you hover over the retweet, hit the “change to quote” button:

Once you’ve selected the accounts where you want to share the retweet and once you’ve chosen the format of the retweet, you can share to your Buffer queue however you deem best

• Adding the retweet to end of your queue (Add to Queue)
• Adding the retweet to the front of your queue (Share Next)
• Sharing the retweet right away (Share Now)
• Scheduling the retweet for a specific time (Schedule Post)

And that’s it! Fill up your Buffer with as many retweets as you want. Oh and you can of course also do this for multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. Grab our Awesome Plan or Business Plan if you want to have more than 10 accounts connected and then add retweets to wherever you see fit.

Schedule retweets from your favorite Twitter app

For those using iOS8 or higher on the iPhone or the iPad, you can now publish native retweets via Buffer, through other apps.

Let’s say you’re browsing your Tweetbot app for the latest news. You spot a tweet you’d love to share.

Now you can share this tweet as a retweet and add the retweet into your Buffer queue—all without ever leaving the original Tweetbot app.

It’s the same functionality you’d find on a desktop/laptop browser, using our Buffer browser extension. Now, you can enjoy this cool tool from the comfort of your favorite Twitter app!

Here’s a quick GIF that we put together to show this functionality in action.

For Android, you’ll find similar native retweet options from apps like Twitter. When you find a tweet you’d like to share, you can tap the Share icon and then tap Add to Buffer. This will bring up the option to add to your Buffer queue, and you can further edit the retweet to share it as a quote with the “RT @username: Text of the tweet” text.

Schedule retweets via email from mobile Twitter apps on Android or iOS

Now that you are scheduling retweets from all around the web, we’ve also got another cool way for you to do so: From anywhere on mobile, whether Android or iOS.

The way this works is super simple: You email the Tweet to your secret Buffer email address. That’s it. You can grab your secret Buffer email from here:

Get your secret Buffer email address

Here is what mine looks like:

You can also save your Buffer secret email address to your Android or iOS contacts. In the Buffer iOS app, you do this directly by accessing App Settings > Set up Buffer by Email > Buffer by Email. Simply hit “save” and the contact will be added as “Buffer” to your address book:

Now, whenever you are browsing in any of your favorite Twitter clients, maybe the official Twitter app, TweetBot or others, just hit “mail Tweet” and you can add it to your Buffer queue. Here is an example of the official Twitter app:

All you have to do is send it to your secret Buffer email address and you are all set with another great retweet scheduled in your queue:

Over to you

I hope you get a chance to give the new retweet scheduling a try. Grab our browser extension and give it a go on Twitter.com.

Over to you now. We’d love to hear what you think of the new retweet scheduling. Let us know how you use it and how we could improve it for you!

Image sources: IconFinder, Blurgrounds, Unsplash