Posts Tagged twitter

I listened to a webinar last night with Eric Goldstein about how to use Twitter. I want to take a few minutes to share some of the things I learned about Twitter lists and using TweetDeck to make life with Twitter easier.

First thing is Twitter lists. I remember them adding this feature and was excited to see on my profile that I’m listed 12 times, but I had no idea what it meant or how to use lists for any real benefit.

It turns out that it has a very nice benefit when added to TweetDeck. When you start following a LOT of people it becomes impossible to actively follow everyone, and you probably don’t really want to either. You can create lists for different categories of people you follow so that you can keep a better tab on what is going on.

For example, if I want to keep up with some people that I meet on the Unified Tribe, I can create a list for that purpose. I go into Twitter (assuming that it isn’t “over capacity”) and find one of the Unified Tribe friends. I then clicked on the Lists button on the line below their picture and selected “New List”. In the new dialog box I entered a name and description for my new list, made sure that “Public” was selected, then clicked “Create list”. My new friend is automatically added to my new list. Now I can go find other Unified Tribe people I am following and add them to this list by selecting it from the Lists drop down. I’ll talk about how this makes things really convenient with TweetDeck in a moment.

I like TweetDeck and have used it for a while. It is a convenient way to keep up with tweets from the people I am following, tweets that mention me (which are always cool), and direct messages. What I didn’t know is that you can create additional columns to sort your tweets out.

I can create a new column in TweetDeck to follow only the tweets from people who are on the list I just created. If you haven’t installed TweetDeck, then you will need to do that first. It is a stand-alone application on your desktop. Once you are in TweetDeck you will see the default columns for the things I already mentioned plus an additional one for TweetDeck Recommends. At the very top of the application is a circle with a plus in it. Click it to add a new column. In the new dialog box, select “Groups/Lists” then select your new list. Back in the main application you now see a new column with the recent tweets from the people in that list and you can easily keep up with what they are doing.

Another Twitter feature that Eric Goldstein stressed was it’s search utility. You can use TweetDeck to continuously run a Twitter Search and monitor the feed. In TweetDeck click the button to add another column. This time select “Search” and type you search string in the text box. I’m involved in network marketing, so I’ll type “Network Marketing” (including the quotes because I want the phrase, not the individual words) and click “Search”. Now I have a new column that lets me see what people are saying about network marketing.

The short version is that TweetDeck makes it very easy to use Twitter’s features and stay plugged in with what you want to know.

I would appreciate it if you would share this with your friends and followers. I’d also love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

Wayne Woodworth

Tags: Benefit, Dialog Box, Eric Goldstein, Few Minutes, Network Marketing, New Friend, Social Media, Tweet, TweetDeck, Tweets, twitter, Unified Tribe, Wayne Woodworth