How to Schedule Tweets with Images on Hootsuite

Given how many twitter accounts I’m usually running at any given time, I’m always on the lookout for new tools that help to make my life easier, and my tweets better.

It’s a well-established fact that including an image in your tweet increases the tweet’s engagement exponentially.

Last week, for example, I was heavily promoting a sponsored blog post on my other blog. I sent out about half a dozen tweets over the course of a few days. Some of the tweets had an image inline, others did not.

Here’s an example of a regular one:

And here’s an example of one with an image:

The tweet with an image got nearly 2 times the reach of the first tweet; it got 602 impressions, whereas the one without the image only got 394.

However, here’s the rub: if you’re like me, and use a tool like Hootsuite to preschedule tweets on a daily basis, up to now, including a link in your scheduled tweet was a pain.

You either had to:

• Use Twitter to send your tweet in the moment (I use a tool called Twitshot for this) OR
• Use another tool like Buffer, which does publish the image into your twitter feed, but then you have to worry about scheduling conflicts between Hootsuite and Buffer.

Because, you see, up until now, if you were using Hootsuite to schedule tweets, and included an image, your image would show up in the published tweet as a link, not as an inline image.

Oh happy day! They’ve updated the program, and you can now schedule tweets with images on Hootsuite that will publish into the twitter feed (as an image, not a link)!

How to Schedule Tweets with Images on Hootsuite:

1. Login to your Hootsuite.
2. Go to your profile settings (very top of the dashboard, your photo might be there)

3. Select the twitter account you want to enable this feature on by double-tapping it

4. From the dropdown menu under “image properties” select pic.twitter.com.

Done! And… problem SOLVED! Thanks, Hootsuite!