Tweetdeck bird by Uncalno
Keeping track of your tweets can be a challenge. Twitter can be fast, furious and the constant stream can be overwhelming for new users.
To help you make sense of your Twitter stream you can use a Twitter management tool such as Tweetdeck.
Using Tweetdeck, you can manage your tweets easily, organise them according to interests, and never miss a tweet again. You can even keep tabs on when you are mentioned in Twitter or follow a conversation using a hashtag.
Using TweetDeck is not unlike turbo charging your car – it’s a game changer.
What is Tweetdeck?
Tweetdeck essentially allows you to make sense of the tweets in your Twitter feed. It allows you to view your tweets in a ‘deck’ of columns. You can sort your tweets into columns that are personally and professional relevant to you. Below is an example of a Tweetdeck account.
In the example, you can see three twitter accounts being managed simultaneously: @burrblog @community_hub and @SussexTEL. This set-up allows the user to manage a personal Twitter account, a community interest account and a work-related account without logging in and out of separate Twitter accounts.
Below the Twitter account thumbnails, you can see the space waiting for the next tweet. The green ticks on each Twitter account identify which account the next tweet will be sent from. You can tweet from all of your accounts, or just select one or two of them. Your choice will depend on the nature of your tweet and who you would like to reach.
To the right of the tweet box, you can see a selection of the many columns that are available. These are created through searches of your Twitter feed.
For example, the first column is set to show all of the tweets matching the content ‘learning technology’. This will keep the reader up-to-date with learning technology developments that are mentioned in the Twitter world.
There are many options for your columns, for example, you could create a column for your favourites, your messages, followers or your scheduled tweets.
Examples of columns
Here are some ideas for you to consider when thinking of subjects and keywords for your columns:
- Your ‘feed’ (all of the tweets of the people that you follow)
- Mentions (a column for all the tweets that mention @you)
- Messages (a column for your DMs (Direct Messages)
- Lists (track your lists in one easy to view column)
Tweetdeck also has additional features that can make your Twitter experience much easier to manage, such as scheduling and collections.
Scheduling tweets
You might want to dedicate just a small portion of one day to your week’s tweeting. With scheduling, you can pre-type a number of tweets and then schedule those to post up to three days in advance (in the free version).
Collections
You can create collections of tweets. Add a category column and save the tweets that you would like to keep for future reference. This is a very useful feature due to the speed of a Twitter conversation, especially a Tweet Chat, which can make it difficult to locate a previous tweet.
There are other tools that do a similar job as Tweetdeck, for example, many people opt to use HootSuite. Hootsuite is very similar but allows you to also post updates to Facebook, LinkedIn and various other social media spaces, in addition to Twitter.
If you would like to put your new Tweetdeck account to the test, try engaging with a Tweet Chat such as #BYOD4L or for specialist chats try #phdchat or #ecrchat (Early Career Researchers chat).
Our colleague Nick Botfield (@DurchTechNick) was very impressed when he was introduced to Tweetdeck. You might find a management tool for your tweets just as useful too.
Image: creative commons licensed (BY) flickr photo by Uncalno: http://flickr.com/photos/uncalno/8538660040
