Would you like to be able to schedule pet adoption and fundraising Tweets in advance, without having to pay to use third party software? Well, you can!

Twitter can be a good way to get the word out about available pets and is great for raising money. However, many animal organizations find the time constraints of effective Tweeting make it impractical.

While Twitter is much friendlier to frequent Tweets than Facebook is to frequent posts, followers usually don’t like getting several Tweets in a row from the same account.

Since shelters and rescue groups usually don’t have a volunteer or staff member who can sit on Twitter all day long Tweeting every hour or so, the fix for that problem has usually been to post less-than-optimally or use third party schedulers like Hootsuite.

But Twitter, like Facebook, has native scheduling functionality. You can program Tweets to go out when you want them to — if, that is, you know how.

Twitter has hidden its scheduler in the area where ads are created, and although scheduling Tweets is free, it does require you to create an ad account.

Right now, Twitter ads aren’t very cost-effective for rescue groups and shelters, but because that could change in the future, setting up an advertising account isn’t necessarily pointless even if the scheduler wasn’t buried there.

How do you do it?

1. Log into your organization’s Twitter account and then go to ads.twitter.com to create an advertising account. You’ll need a credit card, even though you won’t be charged unless you opt to advertise.

2. Click on the “Creatives” menu, and select “Tweets.”

3. Click on “Compose Tweet” in the upper right hand corner.

4. Compose your Tweet, then choose the “Scheduling” tab just below it.

5. Click “Finish.” A link will pop up showing you where you can edit or delete scheduled Tweets.

For more information, visit the Twitter Help Center.