There’s a big, predictable reason: if you pop up on someone’s feed, they might reply to you in real-time and expect a response in real-time.

Then there’s every other unpredictable reason: There might be a bad storm and your store might lose power even though your scheduled Tweets say you’re open. You might run out of the special that your scheduled Tweets are so heavily promoting. The event with plenty of seats left might actually sell out but your scheduled posts boast that people can get them at the door. There could even be a fatal accident or other tragedy that makes posting whatever PR speak you scheduled to spew unthinkable.

I’ve seen an instance of each of those in the past month alone.

Then again, you should schedule Tweets because you can’t be at your computer or even on your cell phone ALL the time, and it’s a more efficient way to make sure you get key messages out at key times rather than relying on your memory and the unpredictability of your availability.

It’s not black or white, but schedule with care.