Hey Mike,

Great post! For anyone considering your suggestion #5, Use variable cost alternatives, I'd highly recommend Secretary in Israel (http://www.secretaryinisrael.com). I've been a client for about a year and it's been a wonderful experience. Their owner, Sarah Leah Gootnick, is amazing, and her team of virtual assistants is literally world class. I have a "full-time" assistant named Carly, but it only ends up costing me $400-$1500 a month, because I only have to pay for time she's actually working on my behalf. As you can tell, I'm a raving fan.

Thanks again for a wonderful post.
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Mike, I agree that active twittering takes less than 30 minutes a day. I've been twittering for a while, and probably average less than 20 minutes a day.

Adrian, I can see how it would take more time than that, IF you are trying to build your twitter following by following lots of other users, hoping for the return follow (otherwise known as twitter spam).

twitter isn't a quick fix. You can't cheat your way to a strong, loyal following. If you want more followers (and I'm not convinced this is always the best goal), then provide more value to your existing followers. As Mike points out, patience is the key.

A good indicator of how valuable your tweets are is how often they are retweeted (RT). I use http://www.PeopleBrowsr.com (a client of mine) to keep track of this sort of information and manage my inbound tweetflow.

Another legitimate exception to the 30 minute average would be my friend Frank Eliason (@comcastcares). However, Frank's team is using twitter to provide customer service to a huge customer base. Once you are providing customer service to millions of customers using twitter (a great idea, by the way), you may need a little more that 30 minutes a day.

http://www.twitter.com/jdale