Terre Pruitt's Blog

In the realm of health, wellness, fitness, and the like, or whatever inspires me.

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Posts Tagged ‘TweetDeck’

My Twitter Advice / Tips

Posted by terrepruitt on January 28, 2010

I am not a Twitter expert.  I’ve said that before.  I learn something everyday.  I have learned a few things and I thought I would share them with you since some of the people that read this are actually new to Twitter.

Twitter allows 140 characters.  My advice:

1—When you tweet a link to something, give a little explanation of what readers will find once they click that link.  If not a description, some words that might give them a clue as to what kind of link it is.  As an example, “I love animal videos.” or “Don’t you love dance videos?”  or “Here’s an article on fitness.”

2—If you want to type something along with your link you might want to use something that shortens the link.  I use TinyURL.com or bit.ly.  The link can be copied into the site and the site shortens it for you, and you copy and past it into your tweet.

Some programs like HootSuite and TweetDeck have “shorten links” built into them.  On HootSuite you have to copy the link into the field (highlighted in the picture in pink) and click “Shrink It’.  With TweetDeck you can opt to have links shorten automatically (see the little box next to “Auto Shorten URLs?”).

HootSuite

TweetDeck

Which brings me to #3.

3—Sometimes you might not want to shorten a link.  Sometimes I don’t like to shorten the link because the link itself helps explain what the user will see when they click on it.  Or I want people to see the name of my blog (http://terrepruitt.com) or the name of my website (http://www.helpyouwell.com/).  I think it is good to put the names out there so people can remember it.

I believe there are reasons to shorten and reason not to, but, if you never knew you could shorten you wouldn’t be making a decision for yourself, right?  So I am sharing with you here.

4—Don’t send auto DMs* when someone follows you.  Even when you try to make them look personal, they are not.  Everyone knows it.  Especially when you are following the person because they followed you first, then you get a DM that says, “I’ll follow you back.”  Uh, yeah, right.

Anyway, these are just a couple of things that have come up recently with new Twitter users so I thought I would share it with you.  What URL shortening program or site do you use?  Are you an auto DMer?  Thanks for stopping by.

*DM = Direct Message

Posted in Twitter | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

TweetDeck — Just A Little

Posted by terrepruitt on September 8, 2009

This is a simple overview of TweetDeck.  And by simple I mean it does not include all the features and tips and tricks of TweetDeck.  My posts regarding Twitter are not for the power users to learn from.  It would be great if they commented and shared information, but basically I am sharing what I know and I feel as if I have barely scratched the surface of what Twitter and all its hundreds of applications can do.  In this post I do not cover all that TweetDeck can do.  I only briefly address what I do, so far, with TweetDeck.

First off, one of the things that some people love about TweetDeck is that you can manage multiple Twitter Accounts with it.  I don’t have multiple accounts so I don’t use TweetDeck like that so I won’t be talking about that here.  All I can tell you about multiple accounts and TweetDeck is that there is something that says, “Add more accounts” and above the box you type in it says “From” and I am guessing that if you have multiple accounts it will list them there and you can indicate which account you are sending from.  (I circled that in the photo.  At the bottom.)

For my one account, I use TweetDeck to see various tweets all on one screen.  I have an “All” column set up so that I can see tweets from all of the people that I follow.  But, I am beginning to think that only the people I recently follow show up because I don’t see tweets from people that I started following when I first signed up for Twitter.  So I made another column for those Twitterers.

I also have a column for “Nia People”.  This is a “Group”, these are the people that I have met online that teach, do, practice, and love Nia.  With this column I have actually set it up so that I see certain people that I am following that I know have something to do with Nia.

I have a “YelpSV” search column.  With this column it is set up so that I see people that send a Tweet that mentions YelpSV.  It searches for tweets that contain @YelpSV.

See? You can set up different columns and you can set them up different ways.  You can set up a column for a search on “Workouts” and it will capture tweets that have that word in them or you can set up a column for a group called, for example “San Jose” or “Exercise Classes” and actually indicate certain people whose tweets you want to see in either of those columns.

It is quick and easy to set up columns so you can change them whenever you would like.

I also have a mentions column of HelpYouWell set up so when people @HelpYouWell I see those in a separate column—although they sometimes show up after the ones in the other columns.   And I have DM (Direct Message) column so I can see messages sent directly to me, HelpYouWell.

I don’t have an issue with “API” (whatever that stands for), but I hear of people that do. Apparently Twitter only allows third party applications (systems? programs? Whatever.) 100 “touches” (that’s what I am calling them) per hour.  So if your account “touches” twitter (either sending, receiving, dealing with, whatever) 100 times in an hour you have to wait for the next hour in order to “touch” twitter again.  But this is only with third party stuff, like TweetDeck.  If you are on Twitter.com it does not do that.  So use TweetDeck and if you max out, use Twitter.com until the hour is up and go back to TweetDeck.

Posted in Twitter | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Twitter

Posted by terrepruitt on September 5, 2009

Twitter is interesting.  Twitter is nothing to be afraid of.  Twitter is a tool to be used as one sees fit.  Unlike a hammer that basically has a specific use, Twitter can be used in different ways.  I have some friends that use it as a main source of instant communication:  “Hey, ya wanna go to lunch today?”,  “Meet me at . . .”,  “I am in front of the fountain.”  And other people just pump out their business information with no conversation at all.  I think that however you want to use it is fine.  It all works.  Everyone is different, do what you want. I use twitter to meet new people, to connect with people, learn things, introduce people to Nia, get the word out about my business, and make kissy faces at my husband.

So that last part doesn’t really fall under what I think of as my “business account” but it sneaks in every once in awhile.  (Shrug!)  That is what is so great about it.  It is MY account and I can use it like I want.

I do actually try to manage my account, and here again, people can manage their accounts all different ways.

I use TweetDeck to see stuff all at once:  tweets of people I am following, mentions, DMs, and other columns I have set up.  Then I use Twitter.com to look at my list of new followers and look at their profiles.  I also use Twitter.com sometimes because DMs and “mentions” come to it faster than TweetDeck.  Also, I look at my tweets from Twitter.com.  I try NOT to tweet a bunch of tweets in a row especially if they are “general” tweets.  Sometimes I am having a conversation and so they are in rapid succession.  Twitter.com allows me to see them all in a stream and when I am sending out Nia information or business announcements I try to space them out.

TweetDeck allows you to do some of these things too, but I like Twitter.com for some things.

I also use Mr. Tweet to see who that system recommends.

I use FriendorFollow.com to see who I am following but who is not following me (“following”).  It also shows you who is following you that you are not following (“fans”) and it shows you who you are following that is following you (“friends”).

I also use Twittergrader to sometimes check who is following me.  Friendorfollow is not always accurate.  I also use Twittergrader to see who I can follow in my area.   One of my goals of being on Twitter, as I mentioned,  is to expose people to Nia and along with that I want to obtain students for my Nia exercise classes.  So I try to follow people in San Jose, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Mountain View, and basically the Bay Area, so that I can see local tweets and maybe they will follow me back.  Sometimes that works out.

As you can see if you know anything about any of these programs this is a very rough overview.  If you don’t know anything about anything I have just mentioned then—perfect, I told you something new hopefully without confusing and overwhelming you.  Just go to these sites and check it out. I promise you can’t break them nor the internet!  From these sites you can work on managing your twitter account or get information on your account.

There are so many systems and programs to use.  It is amazing and overwhelming.  Just try it.  Don’t be afraid of it.  Have fun.  Be safe.

If you already use different sites and programs, what do you use?  How do you use it?  Please leave a comment and share with me and my readers because I am not an expert.  I am just learning and I love to hear about all the other stuff out there.

Posted in Twitter | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »