As we know, Twitter is a great tool to use to listen to and engage with your customers.  There are additional tools around the basic Twitter.com interface that you should be aware of to make your use of Twitter more time efficient.

1. HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com)

I use Hootsuite to monitor all the Twitter accounts that I am managing as well as monitoring Facebook and LinkedIn.  I have upgraded to the paid option, but I would recommend (and teach) the free option to get started.  HootSuite is useful to monitor Twitter lists or groups, schedule tweets as well as monitor mentions of your own Twitter account.  There are other tools including TweetDeck and SproutSocial, but I choose HootSuite as I like the user interface and the fact that you can access it from the internet.  No downloads and the internet access means that I can access the same setup from my mobile, my desktop, my laptop and any other internet location.

2. Twilert (www.twilert.com)

I run Twitter workshops in Oxfordshire.  I use twilert to inform me whenever anybody mentions similar workshops or training within 50 miles of Oxford.  This means that I can keep an eye on my competition as well as see anybody who is looking for training.  I can setup a number of keywords and receive a daily digest of tweets mentioning the keywords.

3. Tweepi (www.tweepi.com)

Shows
a) Who you are following who is not following you back and
b) who is following you that you are not following you back
There is nothing wrong in following people that are not following you back – you might find their tweets interesting.  It is worth going through the list every so often to see whether you need to remove anybody from the list – spammers for example.

You might want to keep an eye on those people following you who you are not following – particularly if you don’t automatically follow back using tools like SocialOomph (see below).

4. SocialOomph (www.socialoomph.com)

I have used Socialoomph for a couple of years.  I only use the tool for automatically following , setting up automated welcome messages and keyword email digests – but it can do much more.  I personally prefer the user interface of tools like HootSuite.  Setting up automated messages and automatically following are now paid options on SocialOomph – but I do get interest from my automated welcome messages, so personally I think it is worth the small fee.

5. Tweet Chat (www.tweetchat.com)

A tool which enables you to chat with others on Twitter in real time focused around a

particular #tag.  For example, I occasionally take part in the #lrn monthly chat.  If I setup Tweetchat to monitor the #tag, it will show all relevant tweets.  You could use a search term to do this, but tweetchat allows you to pause the stream, change the speed of the refresh and automatically adds the # tag to any post that you send.

This isn’t an exhaustive list – there are other tools being developed all the time.  What tools do you find particularly useful when you use Twitter?

If you have been on one of my Twitter workshops or had training from me, you may be using HootSuite to manage your Tweets.  HootSuite has recently offered a paid version and is currently asking all current users to decide whether they want to go with the paid version.  What are the main differences?  Here is an outline:

Free Option

• You can have up to 5 profiles on your HootSuite account.  This may be made up of 1 Twitter account, 1 Facebook, 1 Facebook business page and 1 LinkedIn.  If you manage more than 1 Twitter account – you may need to upgrade.
• Stats – up to 30 days history.  Probably enough since you can download to a csv file
• RSS Feeds – set up your blog(s) to automatically get displayed in your Social networking feed.  You can set up to 2 – perhaps 1 to your Twitter feed and 1 to Facebook

Paid Option ($5.99/month)

• Unlimited number of profiles,
• Unlimited number of RSS feeds
• Unlimited days of Stats
• You can see which other Social Networking sites your followers belong to.
• Include Google Analytics in HootSuite – see your website visits from within Hootsuite and overlay your tweets to see the impact your tweets is having on your website visits.
• Ad Free
• Add a team member. You can have more than one person manage your feeds.  Each team member will see what each other is doing.

For most people, the free option will be sufficient but you may that it is worth the money each month to be ad free and see Google Analytics from HootSuite.

HootSuite vs Tweetdeck

There will undoubtedly be people who decide to try out Tweetdeck as an alternative to paying for HootSuite.  I used to be a big supporter of Tweetdeck, but am personally prepared to pay a small amount for the additional features that HootSuite gives me including teams, tabs, Google Analytics integration, the available anywhere nature of the internet based application.

Are you going to use the free version of HootSuite or are you prepared to pay?

Recently, I’ve been involved in a really interesting project developing a course to Introduce Twitter to schools.  Some schools may want to use Twitter as a marketing tool in a similar way to any other business, as part of their marketing mix.  Schools can also use Twitter in a number of areas within the school.  Some ideas are listed here:

To Develop The Teacher’s Teaching Practice

• Teachers can develop their own knowledge and reflect on their own practice, by sharing ideas, opinions and resources with other teachers and non-teachers on Twitter.
• Teachers can keep up to date with news and important changes in their specialist field by following appropriate influencers and media outlets.
• Teachers can learn to speak the same language as their pupils.

As a Learning Tool

• Teachers can ask their Twitter network to tell them and their pupils something about where they are eg. Location, Temperature, Historical fact.  The information can be used to do further research, ask more questions, discuss the results or compare and contrast answers.  The learning is based on up to date information with a real story and encourages higher order thinking skills.
• Use www.twitterfall.com to look at what is being said about a relevant topic e.g. global warming. Clicking on links can give the teacher or class more information about the topic or they may want to ask the tweeter more questions.

Within School development

Using a protected Twitter account,

• School administrators can use Twitter to keep parents up to date with school activities in real time.  The emphasis is on the parent to follow and check their twitter updates.
• A teacher can set up a class account and ask pupils to follow.  Use this to remind pupils when homework is due and respond to questions about homework.
• Set up a class account and invite parents to follow the class.  Parents can be kept informed about what the class is doing and they might like to interact.

Do you know about schools that are using Twitter?  How well is it working?    What would you add to this list?

“I don’t have time for Twitter” is the phrase I often hear when presenting Social Media for business. Twitter need not take up any more time than face to face networking if you understand why you are using it, who you what to talk to and what is your marketing message. Twitter can help market your business in a number of ways including:

- Brand building. More people know about Concise Training because of Twitter than would know about me if I didn’t use it. I have been given testimonials on Twitter, my tips have been forwarded to others and people know who am I when I walk into a room because my face is on Twitter. The buzz that has been generated about the quality of my training through Twitter has definitely resulted in people approaching me for work and partnerships. I have 2600 people following me – that is 2600 people who get a message when somebody has recommended me……

- Customer Service. There is a good chance that people will be talking about your company whether you are on these social media sites or not. Hopefully they will be talking good things – but do you know if they say anything negative? Your clients are using these sites, you can respond to what they are saying, if you are using them to listen.

- Advertise your latest offers or services. People have chosen to listen to you on Twitter – tell them about your services. Don’t only talk to them about your services or they will soon stop following you, but drop them in every so often.

- Share articles that you have found interesting relevant to your industry – this shows that you are taking a professional approach and are in the right space. You will also get kudos from the people you share – don’t forget to acknowledge them.

- Talk to your customers, colleagues and networking friends. Keeping in touch through Twitter is a great way of finding out what is going on in the lives of the people you know. This allows you to build a better relationship – and as we know, business is all about relationships.

Twitter isn’t for everybody – but have a look before you dismiss it altogether. Make it easy for yourself – use tools (Tweetdeck or HootSuite) to help you manage the people you are listening to and use a combination of real time and scheduled messages.

How do you use Twitter for your business?

As many of you know, I have been a huge advocate of using TweetDeck to manage your followers on Twitter.  All my Twitter training courses have involved an element of learning how to use TweetDeck.  Over the last six months, TweetDeck has changed and improved, so that now it is a powerful and somewhat complex application.  I have a number of columns set up on my TweetDeck so that I can easily see what each of those people that I actively follow are saying.  I start up TweetDeck in the morning and leave it running all day, jumping in occasionally to add my own tweets or Retweet others.  TweetDeck is a great application to manage the process. 

Recently though, I have found that TweetDeck has stopped working for one reason or another.  The ‘Don’t panic there is a problem’ message appears on a regular basis.  What is the reason for this? – it may well be a lack of memory on my fairly old computer, but the only way I have found to get things back to running normally is to logout of TweetDeck, close it down and log in again.  Only a few clicks are needed – but it is a bit irritating.

I recently saw a post comparing HootSuite to TweetDeck by Graham Jones .  I had looked at HootSuite a few months ago when starting out with Social Media and didn’t think much of it.  Perhaps I should have another look.

I have been using Hootsuite for the last couple of days and wanted to share my initial thoughts with you.

Yeah for HootSuite

I like the look and feel of HootSuite.   To me, it looks a bit cheerier somehow!  I particularly  like being able to set up different tabs or sets of columns.  I have different tabs for different Twitter usernames that I am looking after.  I like the organisations this brings.

In the past I have been a fan of futuretweets.com as an easy to use site for setting up automatic tweets.  This has proved to be rather unreliably recently and I was going to start using socialoomph.  I am not a huge fan of the socialoomph interface and find it particularly difficult to teach so I think the scheduling facility of HootSuite is great.  It is easy to use, though has brought up error messages a few times this morning, so judgement will be reserved until I’ve tested how robust it is when using it for teaching.

Pictures in Hootsuite can be seen immediately in a thumbnail rather than going to a link – makes it all a bit smoother.

 Yeah for Tweetdeck

I still like Tweetdeck for the capability to automatically fill in the names of your followers.  I don’t always remember exactly how a username is spelt and do like the autofill of Tweetdeck so that you end up refering to the person you wanted to.

I like the autoshorten facility in Tweetdeck.  Sometimes if you Retweet a tweet, you have to shorten it to the 140 characters, the autoshorten facility allows you to do this simply.  I haven’t found anything similar in Hootsuite.

Jury Still Out

Hootsuite uses owl shortening rather than bit.ly which I think is a disadvantage.  I like the fact that bit.ly can be used in multiple applications.  Both give similar tracking facilities – though tracking is within the application in HootSuite.

Both applications allow you to easily add people to lists, retweet and reply and use more than one user name.

Summary

So in summary, which do I prefer best?  It is swings and roundabouts really – both have great and not so great features.  For now, I’m going to test how HootSuite a bit more – the crashing out of Tweetdeck was really starting to annoy me.  However, a new version of TweetDeck is rumored to be imminent which should include geotagging.  It will be interesting to see what other new features are included and whether HootSuite brings out a competing version. 

I would be interested in your thoughts.