Wrapping up this week of Twitter indoctrination with some of my tips and tricks.When I was writing this post Monday evening, I had 1332 followers and was following 856 people.
I find following 856 people impossible.
So here's what I do:
Most of my social media activity is done on my computer, a 3 year old laptop. At home we also have a desktop computer, but my wife is the only person who uses it.
Last summer I upgraded my old cell phone to a Droid, but if my laptop is available, it is still my computer of choice.
Twitter has a way for you to organize the people you follow that I started using once I started following a couple hundred folks. They call it Lists.
Everyone I decided to follow, I put on a list. Currently I have 4 main lists:
- Newsmakers
- Marketing-Advertising
- Fort Wayne Area
- On The Edge
There is one more list that I created that I usually don't tell people about. It is the RF list.
RF is my own shorthand for Really Follow. I'll get back to this in a moment.
Like I said, everyone I follow goes on one of the 4 lists. Some folks are on a 2 of the 4 lists. Twitter limits a List to 500 people. So as I increase the number of followers, I may need to add some more lists.
Instead of using the Twitter.com website (Twitter.com) I use one of the various Twitter applications on my laptop. There are several available, free of course and the two that I have used most are Tweetdeck and Seesmic.
I currently prefer Tweetdeck but both are fine depending on what your own personal preferences. Another Twitter application that is popular is Hootsuite. I tried it, it doesn't have all the features I want.
So, I'm going to help you set up Tweetdeck. Here's what you see when you go to Tweetdeck.com.
(Click on the pictures to make them bigger, if you want).
Click on the Desktop button at the top and you'll see this:
In the lower right side of your screen is the download button. Click on it and install on your computer.
As you go through the installation and set up of Tweetdeck, you'll see all kinds of options.
One of my favorite is the ability to update my Twitter account, my Facebook account and my LinkedIn account all from Tweetdeck. Play around with the options and in the weeks ahead I'll point out some of my favorites.
But for now, I have one more Tweetdeck tip and it involves columns and lists.
Tweetdeck allows you to set up multiple columns and you can decide what each column will contain. Take a look at mine:
4 Columns fit the screen on my laptop. My usual 4 columns:
- My RF list
- Mentions
- Direct Messages
- Facebook Status Updates
Remember Twitter lists are limited to 500 people. My RF list currently has 450 people on it of the 850+ that I am following.
My RF list is fluid. I'll put people on this list for awhile and then if I'm not really interested in keeping up with their tweets all the time, I may drop them from my RF list. Some people come and go on my RF list and come back again.
About once a week, I'll look at some of the tweets from folks who are not on my RF list and decide to add them to the RF list. If you are not currently on that list, don't worry about it, you probably will be in the future.
The Mention column shows tweets that include @ScLoHo.
The Direct Message column shows private messages sent to or from me.
I have the Facebook status update column so I can be aware of what my Facebook Friends are up to.
(By the way, I am currently using Tweetcaster on my Droid.)
Starting next week, Fridays will be a guest post day. I have a few lined up, but if you want to write something for me to consider as a guest post, let me know.
Next week, I'll introduce you to LinkedIn and we'll see where else this Social Media Adventure takes us.
Your comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome.
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