Organize Your Twitter
May 20
Let’s face it, most of us are probably not the best at keeping organized. If you are anything like me, your probably looking at a desk covered with stacks of papers that just keep getting moved around.
The same thing happens with social media. While I do like to try new sites and services as they become available, it can easily become overwhelming. I thought I would start by pointing out a few ways I organize my Twitter efforts, and then ask you what you do to keep from getting overwhelmed.
Automation:
I don’t really believe in automation of social media per se. But I do a few things to make my efforts work easier for me, because let’s face it, it is easy to get lost in the time and end up “wasting” too much time on social media efforts and not getting any results. So, I do use a few tools to help me, and some of them I plan to write about more extensively in the coming weeks:
TwitterFeed:
Twitterfeed is a great tool to use to automatically send tweets from an RSS feed. I have several sites, and the last thing I want to do is forget to tweet one of my own articles! So I use Twitterfeed to automatically post from feeds, and not just my own. I also use it to tweet a few of my friends articles or people I always seem to RT anyway because I think my followers will enjoy their content. I don’t go crazy with it, moderation is key, as with anything else.
Tweetspinner:
I have been using Tweetspinner off and on for about 6mos. I plan to write more extensively on it soon, but I will give you some basics about it here. Just to be clear, Tweetspinner is NOT a “get followers fast” application. It is more of a tool I use to manage my account. Some of the features include:
- DM Inbox: Archive and Anti-Spam – This feature helps get rid of spam DM’s
- Follower Manager: Manages followers by showing you those that you followed but aren’t following back, and those that have followed you and you are not following back.
- Prune/Purge: This is part of the follower manager, and you can set it to unfollow people based on settings, like if they haven’t Tweeted in 30days (or however many you set). There are other settings to filter these actions.
- Keyword Follow: This feature allows you to choose keywords, and automatically follow people that Tweet them. (one of my favorite features, because you are targeting those you follow by their tweets)
- Mimic Follow: This feature allows you to put in another Twitter user, and start following their “friends” and followers. Can be really helpful if someone has very similar interests and you want to target their followers too. I have found that these followers tend to follow you back more than the keyword followers too.
- Location Filtering: Local business? Put your location in, and only the ones in that location get followed!
- Smart Tweets: This feature allows you to schedule tweets. I am not a huge fan of this, but I do use it occasionally.
Unless you get the “Pro” account, most of these features are limited or not available. There is a free 5 day trial for the Pro account, so you can test it at no risk. The best part about the “Pro” account is all these features can be turned on/off and set on a schedule for you.
Some might argue that this takes the “social” out of social media, I disagree. But, I am not trying to automate my social media, only make it easier for me in the time I have. I have gained 800 targeted followers in the last 4 days using it, and they are targeted for me. How much time do you think it would take to do that with twitter search, manually filtering?
Feed Twitter To Other Sources:
I spend MOST of my social time on Twitter, so to me, it makes sense to “feed” my Tweets out to other services. Currently, I feed mine out to my FriendFeed account, my Facebook account, and , my LinkedIn account. This allows me to reach a larger audience with only one update.
Twitter Lists:
I use lists to organize my friends so I can browse by a “topic”. It really does help me to see people I am really trying to follow, and they don’t get lost in a stream of “noise”, which Twitter can be at times. Lists are nothing new, but I really don’t think people use them to their advantage. I even have people on lists that I am not following yet, so I can watch them before I decide to commit.
Discussion:
These are a few of the ways I make my time on social media a little more “organized”, what about you?
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