by Gretchen Glasscock

In many ways, today’s web is all about moving beyond our own websites, getting out of our own skins and connecting with others. At the same time, you are connecting on Facebook and tweeting out your 140 characters on Twitter, you also will be checking Twitter or  geolocation apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Loopt to see where your friends are and what they’re up to. You will be frequenting sites like Yelp to check the reviews that folks in your ‘hood are giving to local restaurant and services.  It will be a connected world and, to stay in the loop, you have to do your part.  You have to be churning out tweets like the rest of us.

By now, those who work on the web, or are dependent on the Web for their business, understand twittering is no idle pastime. For some of us, it is an essential business activity. And probably for most of us, it should be.

All of us who are web savvy know we should be twittering and building our social media profile, 24/7. We should be working our  Facebook connections, polishing our LinkedIn profile, or writing our blog and building our following on a continuous basis. Unfortunately, we can’t.  There are only 24 hours in a day and we can’t be working all of them.  Even if we could, we couldn’t use all those hours to enhance our social media standing.  Here’s the bare minimum of social media we should be constantly expanding and enhancing:

• Twitter – for real-time news, trend spotting, shout outs, communication, and learning via TweetDeck and search.twitter.com
• Facebook – for keeping up with old friends, meeting many new ones, knowing what’s going on and trending and learning more about your favorite brands ( who knew Coca Cola was so creative & how about that Starbucks?)
• LinkedIn – the number one resource for executives on a talent hunt, so a good place to network. Bait for the big fish. Your LinkedIn Profile should be as fresh and up to date as fresh squeezed orange juice. And packed with Vitamin C.
• WordPress – to deploy attractive websites loaded with plug ins and widgets to enable them to do heavy lifting on their own, with occasional but diligent monitoring and supervision

So , what to do?

Given the enormous commitment of time and energy it takes to maintain an interesting and robust website or blog , I’ll take all the sophisticated, tech-savvy help I can get. I’m a big believer in automating as many tasks as possible on a website. That’s what plugins and widgets are for: to free you up for the big thoughts, the hot trends, the strategic processes.  And for me, that’s where Twitterfeed comes in.

When you start with Twitter I think you have to learn the pace , the quick tempo, trending topics and how to retweet, ie. pass on someone else’s interesting tweet, perhaps adding your own thought to it. Long ago, I used to wonder what was up with Twitter. But, once I got into Twitter, I found it addictive for several reasons. #1: Thought leaders in the Internet space were constantly telling me what they were thinking and what was the newest and the coolest. And #2.  I didn’t need a ton of bricks to fall on my head to see what an incredibly powerful marketing tool Twitter could be.

Once I got started, I realized the need for constantly updated information.  I also realized one could automate this process, using my blog to feed my twitter account. You just go to Twitterfeed, set up an account, then paste your blog’s feed URL into the text box provided to set up a new feed.  You can also set up feeds for thought leaders in your field.

I keep a keen eye out for those “widgets” or “gadgets” as Google calls them, those tiny pieces of automated code that you can install on your page to work tirelessly behind the scenes. If you create and install a Twitter widget on your home page, you will constantly have a stream of fresh and updated content to draw users to your site.

But even if you tweet ceaselessly, which you can now do by following the steps above, it is still important to find time to post to your own website or blog and to develop the right mix between blogging and tweeting.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t put out a blog ( or in my case, several blogs), manage several websites, keep up with the social media and work with clients if I didn’t have lots of help from fast, efficient online tools and services which speed up the process and make it more effective.  One of my favorite services is Zemanta which is co-pilot of my blog, offering relevant links, suggesting keywords, providing related articles, in case I want to poke around the blogosphere a bit, and, usually, providing a pretty good graphic I can append to give a little pop to the story.

Adam Singer of  TheFutureBuzz.com reminds us “ you’re essentially contributing to someone else’s network on Twitter” rather than building your own website or blog following.  And , on your blog, “Old articles are valuable and still read years later, given infinite life by the engines.  Old Tweets live in archive purgatory where a majority will never be seen again.”

So do both:  Twitter, Facebook, social media and your own Blog, which you are building for yourself and for the future.  Just find the right balance.  And all the tools you can find to help you along the way.

Related articles

• How to Use TwitterFeed: Consistent Twitter Presence (growmap.com)
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• 20 Easy Ways to Promote Your Blog Across the Social Web (performancing.com)

I owe this to @charbrown from Twitter.  Still trying to learn and make my use of TweetDeck more effective. Charles said to group your favorite Tweeters…. ones who were consistently interesting and you might want to retweet….in one group or column on TweetDeck.  That allows you to clear out some of the noise and focus, for the most part, on only quality Tweets.

Problem was I didn’t know exactly how to do that.  @charbrown to the rescue!  Here’s what he direct messaged me, with admirable brevity:

“At the top of the screen you should see several buttons.  the 6th one from the right has a couple of heads, click that ….

continued) … and it will open up a window you can name your new group, it will also allow you to add selected followers

charles brown / charbrown”

Thanks, Charles.  It’s even easier than that, since a list of people you are following pops up and all you have to do is check their name and save.  Now you’ve also just saved yourself a lot of time sorting through tweets and made your whole Twitter experience more effective.  Thanks again, Charles

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I don’t know about you, but I’m still learning all the best tools for Twitter, learning to tweet and need all the best help I can get.  I found this pretty useful and hope you will too.

GissiSim.com | How to Tweet Deck like a PRO.

How to Tweet Deck like a PRO

People have been asking me for more tips about how I use my Tweet Deck. I was sort of wanting to give twitter a little rest. However the response has been overwhelming, so here we are. I’m personally under the impression that there is no other client worth using. Yes it’s not the prettiest client around. At first it can be awkward to use. However once you learn how to use it like a power user, you’ll never know how you tweeted without it!

First time

When you first start your tweet deck up, you’ll be greeted with 3 columns. All Friends, Replies, Direct Messages, and there might be a TwitScoop column all the way at the right. If TwitScoop column is there, close it quickly with the X in top right. Also close the Replies column. What you want to do first is click on the Search button in the toolbar in the top left, it’s the magnifying glass icon =) Now you’ll get a nice search box popping up. Write your twitter username into it. This is the column that will replace the replies one we closed earlier. The reason we do this is because sometimes people forget to add the @, also you’re own tweets come in there so you can remember what people are replying to =) Now use the arrow at the bottom of your new column to move it to where the old replies column was.

Settings

Something that is worth getting out of the way quickly. There are a few things you want to change right away. Start by turning off the annoying noise tweet deck does every time new tweets come in. Select the Narrow column view, lets you fit more columns in. You can uncheck the “Include All Friends Notifications” since it’s not a very informative notification. I personally prefer the Tweet Window at the bottom, try it out for yourself and see. One other thing that is optional is to Open profiles in web page, it’s good if you are big on looking at profiles since looking at them takes API calls. You only get 100 API calls an hour. I actually have this selected at work. Here is what your general tab might look like: You can play with the Colors/Font tab all you want, I’m not going to give you any pro tips on that =) However the API tab is something you need to look into. It’s hard for me to tell you exactly what is best in your situation, so here is a screenshot of how I have mine set.

Buddies

Once you reach a certain number of people that you follow, your going to want to set up a group. Click on the group button in the top toolbar. In my case I only have one group set up. This group is for my close friends and family, people who’s tweets I don’t want to miss at all. I have very few people in this group just so it doesn’t get over crowded. I’m sure that once people have even more followers it will be nice to set up a few different groups for different groups of people. One for professionals, one for co workers, etc etc. Now there are a few ways to add people to your newly created group. However I find the best way to do this is by mousing over their profile image, click on the more icon. You’ll get a dropdown where you can choose to add them to any group that you would like. Looking at this menu you will see a lot of very useful features. One that I actually use on this list is the Translate one. Sometimes the people I’m following will write one and one tweet in a different language, and instead of unfollowing them like some people do, I just translate the tweet =) Once you reach this point you should have a window that looks something like this:

Search and Filter

Now it’s on to what makes twitter so powerful. I’ve learned to use this to watch how my blog articles are traveling. See what people are talking about on a certain subject. You name it, the search functionality can do it. I’m sure I’m not using it for everything it can be used for yet, however it’s been very useful with how I’m using it as is. You’ve seen how to do a search with your username and replies, so you achieve this in the same way. What I like to write in there is the name of a blog article that I’m promoting at the moment, since people that tweet about it rarely include my name in it anymore. Also this way I can find new people that like my articles and webpage, in return following them or get to know them. If your blog article is long enough it should be enough to just write it as is, however sometimes you might want to put quotes around it “How to blog like a pro” that way you get those words in exactly that order. Another thing I like to do is have a open search on something I’m interested in like Sharepoint, Apple, CMS, PHP, WordPress etc. This way if I see someone write anything interesting about something I’m INTERESTED in, I can add them =) So here is an example of how my TweetDeck is now: Now there is really one more thing left to talk about and that is the filter. I’ve talked about this before in an earlier article, however I want to include it here as well. At the bottom of every column there is a filtering button. Like I’ve talked about here you can write things like http and RT @ to get some of the best of what your friends are talking about. You can filter more things than just for text, you can filter by User, by Time, and by Service they entered the tweet. So another thing I like to do is select services and write blip to get some good music people are talking about =) One last thing about filtering before I wrap up this article is that you can also select to filter things MINUS a specific word, or time, or person etc etc. Can be very useful if someone is tweet spamming, or however you would like to use it =)

If you have some more tips or hint on how to best use Tweek Deck, please add a comment or Tweet me.  Thanks.

If you’re going to use Twitter….. and you should…. you might as well get the best apps to support you…. to make the process faster and more automated. Serious users consider Tweetdeck a must.  Also Hellotxt can be useful, since it updates from web, mobile, sms, email, 3rd party applications, API to more than 35 social network at the same time.

You can also take a look at the 21 most popular Twitter applications ranked by TechCrunch that produced these monthly traffic results:

1. Twitpic	1,236,828
2. Tweetdeck	285,864
3. Digsby	233,472
4. Twittercounter	212,200
5. Twitterfeed	149,812
6. Twitterholic	147,164
7. Twhirl	143,333
8. Twitturly	88,793
9. Twtpoll	74,154
10. Retweetist	60,051
11. Tweepler	51,304
12. Hellotxt	45,754
13. Twitdom	45,411
14. Tweetscan	44,463
15. Tweetburner	41,754
16. Tweetvisor	31,621
17. Twittervision	30,708
18. Twitterfall	29,592
19. Monitter	25,433
20. Twibs	17,168
21. Twistori	16,229
22. Twitbin	14,986

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Broadcasting your brand can be a two way street. The goal is to start up communication with as wide a swath of people as you can manage.  What we are learning on the Net is there is no better way to start that conversation than with short Tweets, small messages throughout the day that let people get to know you and start listening to what you have to say.

And one of the best apps you can use as a “control panel” to guide you through the day of Tweets or broadcasts is the newly enhanced TweetDeck, http://search.twitter.com/search?q=TweetDeck

According to early adopter and tech guru, Lous Grey, “TweetDeck has already become the go-to Twitter application for many of Twitter’s most-active users, including Ross Mayfield, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Darren Rowse, Mark Krynsky and Guy Kawasaki….” these are all well known people on the Net you should check on and see how they use Tweet to build their popularity.

The New TweetDeck: Click for Full Size

According to louisgray.com: TweetDeck Readies New Release, Slimming Down & Adding Services “a long list of new features includes:

• Adding sent direct messages to the direct message (DM) column.
• An added spell checker
• The addition of a “narrow columns” option
• Integration of TweetShrink
• The introduction of new TweetDeck Services

TweetDeck Will Display Narrower Columns to preserve space.
One of the few concerns I’ve seen voiced regarding TweetDeck is that it can be a screen real estate hog. Once you start with a column showing your friends’ tweets, add a Replies column and Direct Messages, pretty soon you’re giving up a good chunk of your monitor. With that in mind, Dodsworth has both updated the interface to make it slimmer, but also added the aforementioned “narrow columns” option. The addition of sent DMs in the DM column also makes sense, essentially showing the conversation in full, assuming you are both sending and receiving DMs with the same Twitter users.

The New TweetDeck Integrates Spell Check
The addition of TweetShrink to TweetDeck also helps to bail you out in the event you have something to say, but just can’t seem to keep it down to a mere 140 characters.

For example, the note: “Will it reduce the number of characters in my message or tell me what to cut?” is shortened to “Will it reduce the number of characters in my msg or tell me what 2 cut?”, saving me five characters. Who knows when that could come in handy? It also reduces common words like “and” to &, for example.

Also interesting is the addition of the first of what is expected to be many TweetDeck Services, that enables additional information from outside of TweetDeck to be displayed. In this version, there is an undocumented feature that injects your follower data in the top of the replies column as the application is started, powered by twittercounter.com. Dodsworth promises more will be integrated along the way.”

If you haven’t gotten on the Tweet bandwagon before now, today is a good time to start.  It’s like having your own broadcasting station to get your personal brand out there and growing followers.

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Currently we are in the process of learning how to use Twitter so we can make new friends, broaden out sphere of influence and blow our own horn, in order to be more successful.

Since I am no authority on Twitter, I’m going to turn to stand in tech evangelist, entrepreneur and Twitter guru Guy Kawasakit to tell you which tools to use and how to use them.

In Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter, Kawasaki provides……

“Tip 8: Use the right tools. At the end of the day, you either have many followers or you don’t. A good effort doesn’t count, so you might as well use the right tools to make picking up followers as easy as possible. Here’s what I use:Here’s what I use:

1. SocialToo. SocialToo provides a service that automatically follows everyone that you do. It also enables you to send them a nice welcome message. If you heed my advice to follow everyone who follows you, it’s indispensable. It can also inform you when someone has stopped following you too.
2. Twitthat. This is a Firefox button that you install by dragging onto your toolbar. You click on the button, and it grabs the link of the page you’re reading and creates a tweet with from the link. By default, it quotes the existing headline, but you already know you should blow that out.You can also create custom “actions”—meaning a snippet of text to precede your tweets. I made my custom action the simplest possible: “-”. I wish that a custom action wasn’t required, that the editing area was larger, and that Twitthat displayed a character count, but how can I complain about something that’s free and indispensable?
   

   ---

   Update: check out a product called Adjix. It works like Twitthat plus it doesn’t require a custom action, the editing area is large, and it displays the character count. It also shows how many people clicked on each link.

   ---

3. TweetDeck. TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that front ends Twitter. You can open multiple panes on it with specialized purposes like displaying your direct messages and custom searches. These custom searches enable you to create a “dashboard” to Twitter.
   

   TweetDeck is what I use for custom searches. I have a pane with this custom search (brackets not included): [Guykawasaki OR Alltop OR “Guy Kawasaki” -Alltop.com]. This finds all instances where people mention “Guykawasaki” as well as my own tweets because they are from “@guykawasaki” and “Alltop” plus it removes all tweets with “Alltop.com” (Notice that there’s a minus sign before “Alltop.com” and you must capitalize the “OR”.). I remove tweets containing “Alltop.com” because hundreds of people evangelize Alltop news posts by using this Twitterfeed (see below).

   You can also do custom searches like this at the Twitter site by clicking here, but the TweetDeck interface is much prettier.

4. Twellow. Twellow is a site that categorizes people according to their interests by monitoring their public messages. Its categories include accounting, advertising, marketing, real estate, and science. You can use it to find people who are interested in the same topics you are. Here is an example of the people in the beer category (Courtesy of @ducttape).
5. Twittelator Pro. This can provide the same custom search results as TweetDeck, so I use it whenever I’m not on my MacBook.

6. Posterous. Don’t click on the link. Instead, send an email to post@posterous.com with a photo, video, or audio clip attached. Posterous will create a blog for you and post the photo, video, or audio. You can even include the HTML embed snippet from video sites like YouTube, and Posterous will embed the player. Your subject line becomes the headline of the posting, and the body of the email becomes the posting itself. Then set your Posterous blog to automatically post to your Twitter account, and voila!, you have pictures, video, and audio in your tweets. This is how I tweeted the showerhead picture from the Singapore Airlines lounge. The Posterous FAQ explains it all. An alternative for posting pictures is TwitPic. It is also quite easy to use to tweet pictures, and it is integrated with TweetDeck.
7. Twitterfeed. This website enables you to automatically post RSS feeds as tweets. I use it, for example, to automatically post all Truemors posts as if they were tweets from me. When you really trust a site’s feeds, I recommend that you incorporate Twitterfeed to reduce the burden of manually finding good content.”