Business on Twitter

Having spoken to lots of people about Twitter, I realise that the first impression most people get is of the Twitter website.

If they’ve spoken to someone like me, they’ll have probably looked at my Twitter page, realised how confusing it looks and gone away pretty quickly.

“I don’t get it” they say … “It’s all messy” they say…. “It makes no sense” they say - and do you know what? They’re right!

I don’t understand how anyone manages to cope with Twitter - especially if they ‘follow’ more than a handful of people.

But luckily for them (and for me!) there are various bits of kit out there that will help you make some sense of Twitter. Twitterfox, Twhirl and many others.

My tool of choice is Tweetdeck. I especially like the fact that they’re on Twitter themselves, and they listen to criticism as well as praise, and take feedback from their userbase.

Recently Thomas Power of Ecademy.com asked me how I use Tweetdeck, and I’d like to share with you the answer I gave him. Hopefully it will help you to understand how much easier Twitter can be, how little time it needs to take, and how it can help business, social and research alike.

I use it in the same way I guess many people do - it allows me to put people into different groups / columns - so for example some people I follow for social reasons, some are industry experts and some are in a kind of ‘holding’ column which is people that look interesting but I haven’t decided whether to carry on following them yet. Then there’s the column that refreshes every so often and has a search for my name in it to see if people are talking about me

I have a column for a Tweetake.com search too - the Twitter backup service I own along with @alfaguru

A DM column makes sure that I don’t miss a DM - I like the fact that Twitter emails me my DMs, but it’s a pain that I can’t reply to them by replying to the email.

From Tweetdeck I can shorten a URL via various services, post a 12 second video (although I never do) and post pictures via Twitpics.

The Twitscoop button allows me to see trends.

Tweetdeck basically allows me to organise my Twitter ‘life’ - I think the reason that a lot of people don’t ‘get’ Twitter is because they’re trying to make it work for them by only using the website - if you follow people who Tweet a lot then that’s quite difficult. (Not everyone grew up with IRC and non threaded chat rooms!)

So that’s how I use Tweetdeck - if you want to know more about Tweetdeck, there is a great video here — How to use Tweetdeck

And here are some other bits I’ve written about Twitter:

• Who says Twitter is no good for business?
• Getting business on Twitter takes time, dedication and discipline?
• Making sense of Twitter chatter

Follow me on Twitter - Nikki Pilkington on Twitter

Nikki Pilkington

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Other posts you may be interested in:

• Making sense of twitter chatter
• Hit the (Tweet) Decks!