Here is an Infographic of Top 15 Twitter Applications.  First Place  goes to Tweet Deck, although I would rate HootSuite as a close second!

Which is your favorite app for tweeting?

 Michelle Maura is an Organizational Psychologist, singer and Yoga teacher. She practices Mantra Yoga Meditation and Hatha Yoga, while studying Yoga philosophy. Michelle shares her thoughts on her blog Thoughts Are Things, while also contributing at Intent.com. She focuses on the importance of looking at the positive side of every situation in life and always moving forward. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/michellemaura.

There are infinite uses one can give to Twitter- from online marketing, to sharing interesting information to filling in moments of boredom or loneliness. There are also varying degrees of Twitter usage- there’s the user that will go online for 20 minutes a day and check older tweets as mini emails, there’s the person who logs on after every break to update others and themselves on the day’s happenings, and there are the hard core users who use software like Tweet Deck or have apps on their mobiles to notify them of every tweet possible, audio alert and scheduled tweets included.

Whether you are new to the vast and still growing Twitterverse or already feel established your tweet space, you might have asked yourself this question just how much Twitter is good for you. Here are a few questions that might help you get your answer.

  How much Twitter is good for you?

• Are you using social media to establish your product or company on the market, and would like to enjoy the advantages Twitter offers?
• Are you aiming to promote yourself because you like the idea of being a microcelebity?
• Are you going through a lonely stage in real life and hoping to meet fellow tweeters and feel more connected?
• Are you engaged in your goals and activities and simply like the additional social advantages of Twitter?
• Are you only looking to share information with like minded people, or learn new things from those who think differently?

As you see, the uses of Twitter can be as diverse as the amount of personality types that exist.

There are also many reasons to enjoy tweeting. Twitter was intelligently designed to make you want more. Remember these programs are designed by people who study the psychology of social media and who wish to expand the amount of users as well as frequency of tweets. But everyone who was once a child knows that you can’t have all the candy you crave. Sometimes “no” can be a healthy addition to your Twitter vocabulary.

The idea is for you to find your own motivation and balance it out with fulfilling your responsibility, hobbies and aspirations in your own life. If you can do both things successfully, happily tweeting without feeling that it has a vacuum effect while taking away valuable time from your achievements, you are on the right track.

Can you manage to use Twitter productively without giving up your achievements in real life?

Here are some tips to make your Twitter experience more fruitful, while making sure you have time for yourself:

1. It’s OK to miss some of the action. Unless you have nothing to do with your life, chances are you’re going not going to be able to read every single tweet of everyone you’re following. That’s fine. Twitter conversations can be similar to chat rooms, but they can also be similar to email. You can check @replies and direct messages sent to you at a later time.

2. Use a Twitter application to enhance your tweet management. There are various applications that can offer a more organized experience of Twitter, rather than just using the web site. These applications, such as HootSuite and TweetDeck, separate the general stream of tweets from those mentioning you, into two categories: public @replies and direct messages.

3. Create a tweet bank. You don’t need to wait for some tweet time to come up with your tweets. There are things that you want to share in real time, but there are other things that you can decide in advance. Make a list of websites, blogs, pics, news, quotes and anything else you that is of interest to you and might be of interest to your followers.

4. Schedule some tweets in advance. If you don’t have the time to tweet as often as you’d like, there’s no reason why you can’t. There are a few sites like Twuffer and HootSuite that allow you to write your tweets in advance and schedule them to be posted later. For example, you can schedule a tweet to be posted every hour, or as often as you’d like, without needing to worry about it.

5. Take a Twitter break. Set a few times a day when you can check in with your tweeples. For example, a few minutes of your lunch break, while you’re resting. Update yourself with what’s going on, and share anything you’d like to comment on about your day/work/other. Be sure to be reasonable with the amount of time you set aside. It’s good as long as it doesn’t take away time from a more important/urgent matter.

These are just some ideas to get started. Feel free to add your own as you see fit. We can enjoy the benefits of Twitter while making the most out of our lives too.

The trick is to find a balance that works for us.

Post Author:  Michelle Maura  /  Web:  Thoughts Are Things  /  Twitter:  Follow Me!

OK, now you can “Pump Up” your twitter! 

Our dynamic trio – Jack, Biz and Evan – have released their biggest feature update: 

Twitter Lists!

Twitter lists are a way for you to group people you follow into categories.  Provided here for your twitter convenience is a short guide on how to create and use them:

1.  Click “create new list” in the new section on the right in the sidebar.

2.  Name it and choose whether to make it private or public.

3.  Add people you are following to your new list by visiting your following page and use the drop down menu beside each username or go to their profile page and use the drop down menu to add them to your list.

 Sharing your list:  Once you’ve created a list and assuming it’s a public list, you can share the URL with anyone.  Also, you can follow other’s lists!

Twitter created a list of all their staff here.

And I created a list of the Tweet Valley Team here.

Tip:  When you click on a team URL, you will see the teams member’s tweets.  If you would like to see who is on the team, just add “/members” to the team URL or click “following” and you will see a page with the team members listed (see example below.)

Issues with this new list feature:

#1 You can’t add yourself to a list you have created.

#2 You can only add people you follow

#3 It’s hard to add people to your list

#4 No way for people to know you are following them

#6 No way to “follow-the-list-except-that-guy-who-tweets-too-much”

#7 You can’t import/export lists

#8 No stats or analytics

#9 No dynamic lists

If you would like to avoid these issues just ignore twitter’s lists and use TweepML to establish and share groups of twitter users.

I am on the Tweet Valley team, but since I created this list I’m not included on the list: add “/members” to the team URL or click “following” and you will see a page with the team members listed

Twitter Counter is a great tool for looking at where you are now in the Twittersphere and where you might be headed.  There is a free version and a paid version.  Depending on what level of detail you want.  You decide.  It makes nice predictions and keeps track of your progress over time once you sign up for an account.

I guess real “expert” or “power” Twitter-ers enjoy and use some sort of desktop client like Tweetdeck, Nambu, or Seesmic to manage their Twitter account. But for me, I seem to have reverted back to the standard Twitter browser interface … with one caveat, I use Firefox … primarily for one very convenient script (or add-on by Al’s Scripts) that turns your following-follower page listings from this:

into this:

If your tweets contain such sayings as “Get more followers, instantly!” or “Find targeted followers in seconds” or “affiliate schemes” then this feature may not be critical … BUT if you are using Twitter for quality and not quantity then having follower-following bio’s listed in this manner is a tremendous help in separating the good from the bad on your account, or identifying a friend of interest on another user’s account.

(I’m in the MAC world so perhaps my PC brethren could chime in, but I am pretty sure the steps below are the same for PC’s as well.)

Step 1 – Install the free download of FireFox.

Step 2 – After the installation is complete, launch. Now download and install Greasmonkey.

If you are unfamiliar with Firefox add-ons then you might like this wiki article about Greasemonkey which is in essentially a JavaScript enabler for the FireFox browser.

Step 3 – Restart FireFox. Now download and install at Al’s scripts the script “Twitter Friend Bios at a Glance”. The explanations for install are pretty clear … really just hit the green install button and follow the prompts.

Step 4 – Now, go to your Twitter follower or following page and separate the wheat from the chaff.

[ Hey! follow @imusicmash, the writer of "Al's Scripts", on twitter too. ]

]]> http://tweetvalley.com/blog/twitter/get-twitter-bios-at-a-glance/feed/ 0 http://tweetvalley.com/blog/tools/search-twitter-and-google-at-the-same-time/ http://tweetvalley.com/blog/tools/search-twitter-and-google-at-the-same-time/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:08:14 +0000 Kent Beatty http://tweetvalley.com/?p=335

Stephanie Beckham (@sbeckham) tweeted this morning about a cool way to

search both twitter and google at the same time.

Twiogle – lets you perform a Google and Twitter search at the same time, helping you get more relevant search results by displaying real time twitter search and Google search results.    Also visit the twiogle blog and twiogle on twitter!

Stephanie Beckham is Sales & Marketing Director & online Idea Strategist at BrainJocks AND a huge football fan! (Go Dawgs!)

follow @sbeckham on twitter!

There are only so many hours in the day… and all of us (well, except for maybe Chris Brogan) have other commitments outside of social media. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just put Twitter on autopilot? You can, but first…

Remember, Twitter is about having conversations and building relationships. The more you automate, the less you converse. Use these tools as a way to spark and enhance conversations, not as a way to step back from Twitter completely. Okay, now on to the tools.

Schedule Tweets for a Later Time

Using TweetLater you can schedule individual tweets to be posted at a later time. You can choose either a specific time (i.e. October 13, at 12:40 PM) or a certain interval from now (i.e. 3 hours from now).

TweetLater also has a paid version (starting at $29.97/month) that allows you to setup recurring tweets. The web service also has other features to help you manage your Twitter stream such as automatically following people who follow you (or unfollowing people who unfollow you), and can manage an unlimited number of accounts.

Automatically Post Tweets from an RSS Feed

TwitterFeed lets you automatically post entries from an RSS feed to your Twitter stream… and it doesn’t have to be your RSS feed! You can post any RSS feed to your Twitter stream. There are some really interesting ways you can use this, from posting new content from your websites CMS or blog to automatically posting updates from an industry trade journal.

TwitterFeed also lets you configure advanced options, such as how often you want your feed to update (as often as 30 minutes) and how many updates to post simultaneously. I strongly recommend that you only update one at a time. Updating more than one entry every interval will make your stream look automated and will annoy your followers. Moderation is the key.

Automatically Post to Twitter from Your Website

While you could always use TwitterFeed to post tweets from your website, the tools below allow you to edit or tweak your tweet before it’s published. Shorten them to fit within the 140-character limit or just tweak them for maximum effectiveness.

Have a WordPress blog? Using the Twitter Tools plugin, you can automatically send a tweet every time you publish a blog post.

Don’t have WordPress? If you use ExpressionEngine, check out the LG Twitter plugin. There’s also a Drupal Twitter module.

There you have it!

There you have three easy ways to automate your Twitter stream. I recommend integrating all three into a balanced Twitter diet. Just be careful not to automate too much. I would recommend that no more than 25-30% of your tweets are automated.

Have an additional tip or know of another service that helps you automate Twitter? Post it in the comments below!

How Twitter Search creates new opportunities for plugging in, tracking news in real time and discovering trends.

By Kent Beatty of Talent Media Group – Follow him @kentbeatty

This post was originally published at KentBeatty.com on June 18, 2009

TweetDeck has been my Twitter Control Center for several months and now with Version 0.26 it’s even more powerful:

Newest features:

• Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts – (for you split personality types)
• Sync and Backup – to keep your TweetDeck safe
• Spam button – use this to avoid twitter spam
• iPhone – take all your TweetDeck favorites, groups, columns etc. with you!

Other features:

• Columns -You can display one column or many columns. I typically keep 10 columns open.

• Groups – View your followers in specific groups, which have their own column.
• Notifications – shows you new updates from peeps you’re following, replies, DMs, or 1 of your groups or searches.

• Facebook – Update Facebook from TweetDeck
• Constant updating – you can adjust the frequency of of updates from “All Friends”, “@Mentions” and “DMs” – no need to manually refresh all the time

• Video – Record, share and watch video clips from within TweetDeck
• Photos – View photo thumbnails directly from TweetDeck
• Short URL – Shorten a URL without leaving tweetdeck!
• Searches – Do a search on your name and find out what others are saying about you on twitter. Find out about an event, an organization or a person by searching for a name, keyword or hashtag.
• Saved Searches – Follow topics real-time and save your searches

Visit the TweetDeck blog

Hashtags:

• Hashtag – like tags, just prefix a word with the hash symbol – #: #mac, #iphone or #fb, used to create “groupings” on twitter
• Hashtags.org – check out this site for real-time tracking of Hashtags: Trends, Tags, People, etc.
• Follow – @hashtags on Twitter on twitter
• Use – hashtags in your tweets by preceding your key words with the #, i.e. #socialmedia
• Hashtag Origin – Hashtags were popularized during the San Diego forest fires in 2007 when Nate Ritter used the hashtag "#sandiegofire" to identify his updates related to the disaster.

Twitter Fanatics – Check out Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic Desktop for twitter – it’s very good and competes directly with TweetDeck for your attention. Here’s a video of Loic on the New Seesmic Desktop 0.3 Release  

Resources: Twitter Cheat Sheet – a 2 page pdf

Twitter For The Tweeple – a 17 page pdf (Getting Started with Twitter)

Using Twitter for Business – a 15 page pdf by

John Jantsch Why You Should be on Twitter – a 33 page pdf by

Navin Kabra A True Beginner’s Guide to Getting The Most Out of Twitter – a 22 page pdf by Sarah J. Austin & Linden A. Mueller

The Twitter Power Guide – a 20 page pdf by Christopher S. Penn

Twitter Tuesday Handout – a 7 page pdf by Phil Johncock Using TweetDeck – a 5 page pdf (brief guide to TweetDeck)