Tag Archives: Tweetdeck

My Twitter Strategy, Courtesy Of Adrienne

April 2, 2012 Mitch Mitchell 16 Comments

By the title, if you’re in the know you know that the inspiration for this post comes courtesy of our friend Adrienne Smith, who wrote a post that I commented on last week titled My Secret Twitter Strategy. I’m not going to reveal her specific strategy, since she took the time to create this neat little video about it, but I will say that there’s a bit of automation, if you will, taking place that helps her out.

In my case, I can’t quite say I have a lot of automation, but I have a brief bit. I do use technology, but it’s certainly not automated. Also, it takes a lot more time for what are results less than what she gets, but I think the important thing is having a strategy to begin with.

My first strategy is that every single blog post I write or have, if you will, goes to Twitter automatically. I thought about the question of whether to create separate accounts for each blog and decided my mind just can’t handle being 5 or 6 different people so it all goes out under the one name. In a way that matters because everything gets mixed together and my audience might get confused. In another way that’s what this particular blog is all about anyway, so having a lot more original content going through one name works for me right now.

The next thing I do is go through the list of local people that I’ve created using an older and better version of TweetDeck to see what’s specifically going on with them. I feel it’s important enough for me to make sure I take care of my local networking to keep my presence known by them. It’s a small group of around 45 people that I stick to because they’ll talk back to me. Others who never responded to anything I had to say I removed, figuring they could care less so why waste my time on them.

The final thing I do takes some time, and I’m not sure everyone could do it or want to do it but it’s my strategy, and it works because I have a smartphone. By using the application on my phone called TweetCaster, I can literally go through hundreds, possibly thousands, of tweets if I need to. Whereas on TweetDeck I tell it to only keep the last 250 messages, I don’t tell the phone to do any such thing.

It’s a good thing I speed read, that’s for sure. If I don’t stay on top of it I can find myself two days behind the curve on checking on tweets. The program will break it into time chunks so that you don’t have to look at everything unless you want to, but that still leaves a heck of a lot of messages.

What do I do? I do through the link of everyone that I’m following, which is just under 900 people, looking at topics that I think interest me, check the links out quickly, then retweet them. Sometimes I retweet with a comment, showing that I looked at the link, while other times I’ll save the link via Evernote so I can go back and leave a comment on it later when I’m back on the big machine and still retweet it.

This strategy does two things for me. One, people love seeing their items retweeted, and they’ll often thank me for it and might pop over to this blog, or any other blog if they notice a link to a blog post I’ve recently written. Two, by going back to their blogs later on and leaving a comment, it helps introduce me to them, or remind them that I’m around, and they’ll potentially pop over to one of my blogs to say something. Either way, it helps drive traffic to my sites.

How well does it work? Well, compared to Adriene, the direct traffic I get from Twitter is around 4% referral traffic for this blog, but it’s a whopping 20% of referral traffic for my business blog. I’m thinking that’s pretty neat. Twitter seems to be her top referrer doing it her way.

Anyway, that’s my strategy; what’s yours?

Twitter Chats

December 7, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 8 Comments

I’m on Twitter often, although I’m not always saying something or reading something. I keep TweetDeck open most of the day, listening for the sound telling me that someone’s either writing me or mentioning my name specifically, and occasionally checking in to see what’s going on at that time.

by Ivan Makarov

I started noticing that some of the people in my Syracuse stream were writing a lot of posts with these hashtags after them. For the uninitiated, hashtags are when you see the number sign (or pound sign; I keep forgetting that’s what they call it now) followed by some word or series of letters or numbers. This signifies a certain topic or thread that people either are or aren’t specifically following. That looks goofy in print, but many people will add a hashtag to finish a thought, knowing that no one is actually following that thread.

Anyway, I wondered what it was all about, so I decided to open up another column to follow this particular chat to see what was going on. In this case it was #cmgrchat, which stands for Community Manager chat. There are people who are employed to handle the social media aspects of their companies or clients, and once a week, Wednesdays at 2PM Eastern time, then get together on Twitter from all around the world and talk about a specific subject. For instance, last week’s topic was how community managers handle vacation time or days off when they might be the only person doing that job. A previous conversation was about SEO and social media; I participated a lot in that one. I’m not technically a community manager, but I do manage a couple of websites for some clients; that plus you don’t have to be a community manager to participate in a chat.

Here’s where the controversy comes in. During the time that a chat goes on, some people might post a lot of material. Sometimes others who are following those people don’t like that hour being hijacked away from them; their words, not mine. If you’re following someone who’s participating in a chat and they happen to have a lot to share, the number of messages from one person could get overwhelming during that hour, so much so that you might miss a message from someone else you follow. Some of the back channel talk has been, well, inflamed if you will, with both sides feeling they’re correct and standing firm on their positions.

I hadn’t realized I had taken a position on it until I reflected on the fact that I participate in at least the one chat and I enjoy myself. After all, Twitter‘s intention was to actively promote conversations amongst people who weren’t in the same location, and what better way to manifest it than doing it in this fashion? I mean, look at how I joined this one; I’d have never known about it if I hadn’t been curious about the hashtags.

I’ve seen some other chats, but haven’t participated yet. And there seems to be at least a couple hundred of them; here’s a link to a list of Twitter chats that someone shared with me. They’re all over the place, and I have to admit that some of them look like fun. I just don’t have the time or memory to participate in most of them.

Do you have a thought on this type of thing? Would you participate, or do you think it’s terrible that a group of people would hijack the stream of a follower like this for an hour or so? And, if you were irritated enough, would you just stop following those people who were participating? By the way, I notice that whenever I participate a lot in one of these things I end up with a lot of new followers, people who were on the chat who must have liked something I said. Since I only track people when they sign up, I couldn’t tell you if anyone has dropped me because of this, but the numbers seem to indicate it doesn’t happen during the chats.

Social Media

The Long And Short Of Twitter

December 28, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 6 Comments

I thought about it and realized that one can’t really create a series on Twitter because it just keeps coming up over and over. There are things we like about it and things we don’t.

It seems that I have mentioned Twitter in 87 posts overall, 88 if I count this one. Out of all my posts, 19 are specific to Twitter, with only two of those not having Twitter in the title. I could probably just post all the links throughout this post and hit every gripe and positive thing I’d ever want to say about Twitter. Well, almost, since I don’t think I’ve griped about the latest thing. Let’s see what I’ve addressed so far; I might not mention all of my previous posts here.

Probably the post that should start everything is How Do You Twitter, as it not only talks about what Twitter is, but there are a few videos there, including a couple that Sire absolutely loved. lol

After that, things have gone all over the place. Here are some topics I’ve addressed here:

Why I Don’t Want To Follow Some Twitter Folks

Why Are We Attracted To Twitter

Are You Twitter Selfish?

10 Things Not To Do On Twitter

Grabbing For More Twitter Followers

It seems that as much I might like Twitter, there are habits that just irk the heck out of me. One of those are all those posts that talk about getting lots of Twitter followers. It’s amazing how some people have grown to have tens of thousands of visitors without saying anything of importance. They don’t talk to anyone and they don’t link to anything interesting, only selling stuff consistently and retweeting what others say. No balance, but they have all these followers, and are following lots of people themselves.

Something else I don’t like are the automated direct messages post. Now, I can tolerate the ones that welcome you. I don’t like the ones that try to sell me anything, or even have a “free gift” for me. I immediately drop anyone who does that, no questions asked.

And now there’s something new. I always thought people you weren’t following, who weren’t following you, couldn’t contact you directly. Well, it seems they can, and a lot of it is not only spam, but porn spam. I mean, what’s the real point of something like that anyway? If it was more like spyware or a virus that was trying to steal a password, it might make more sense, even though it would still be bad. Do these people really think they’re putting something over on us?

Of course, there’s also lots of Twitter information that people can glean, as well as lots of Twitter stuff you can use and do. For instance, I use Tweetdeck which not only gives me lots of options for tracking how people contact me, but protects me from viruses and a lot of stupid changes Twitter makes from time to time. There’s this thing called Twitter Grader which tells you how wel you’re doing on Twitter overall.

If you want to find out how irritating you are to other people, there’s always Follow Cost. And the best thing to check out from time to time, if you’re doing a lot of stuff on Twitter, is Friend Or Follow, which will tell you who you’re following that’s not following you, who has you on their friend’s list, and who you’re not following that’s following you.

Like I said, I don’t think that really qualifies as a series, but I’ve certainly written enough times about it to come close to qualifying, that’s for sure. I don’t know what else there is to talk about Twitter at this point, but I’m sure there will be more gripes about it and more things to applaud about it. One thing I’m not sure I’ve mentioned is that I’ve been to something called a TweetUp, and met some of the people in person that I’ve talked to on Twitter. That’s actually a lot of fun, and something that anyone who’s on Twitter should experience at least once in their lives. So, what’s your thoughts about Twitter overall?

Blogging

Twitter Tips

October 18, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 6 Comments

Not like I haven’t written about Twitter often enough, but I thought it was time to write a short post on how to use Twitter to enjoy it the best if you’re inclined to use the service, as I am. The truth is that there’s no one way to use it, but there are things that you might want to consider doing and other things you shouldn’t even think about doing.

Twitter can be a lot of fun. But it can also get in the way of your regular life, and the life of others. Some Twitter users find themselves glued to their computer or cell phones literally hours a day, waiting for the next bit of information. Some users rarely show up, only remembering when it happens to come to their mind. Here are some tips for how to use Twitter effectively.

One way to use Twitter is to set defined times for when you want to pop on to see what’s going on. Doing that means you won’t be wasting time that’s needed to do other things by checking on Twitter.

Use a program such as Tweetdeck or Twhirl and set it up so that those specific people whose messages you really want to follow will be there when you do decide to sign on. The general Twitter stream moves so fast that there’s literally no way to keep up with it all unless you are on it 24/7. By using programs such as the ones above, you can be pretty sure that their messages will still be around whenever you do decide to check in.

If you have a blog, find a way to use a plugin of some sort to automatically send those messages to Twitter whenever you do an update. Of course, you can also set up your blog to see what the people you follow have to say, as well as to show what you’re saying on Twitter. I’ll admit that’s kind of irritating to me.

Try to sign into Twitter at least once every couple of days. Just like blogs, people like to see some sort of consistent participation from those folks they’re following. If you pop in and out with no regularity, people will unfollow you.

Every once in awhile, post something that has nothing to do with you. If you see an interesting article, video, or image, post that link onto Twitter. If you read something on Twitter that appeals to you, retweet it for others to see, since everyone following you may not be following someone else. And sometimes, just talk to someone you’re following; you never know what may come of it.

Don’t overdo anything. Don’t try to talk to everyone all the time. Don’t retweet too often. Don’t post too many links. Don’t post too many quotes. Don’t ramble; always try to have something to say.

If you’re using Twitter to only promote your business, try to find ways to interact with people so that it doesn’t look like it’s the only thing you’re doing. Respond to people who try to reach out to you from time to time; it enhances your presence, and people like to see that you’re accessible.

These are only a few tips to help you get the most out of Twitter. There really are no right or wrong ways to use it, but some ways will be more effective for you that others.

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