You’re busy.
I’m busy.
We’re all busy.
It’s super easy to get sucked into spending a LOT of time on the various social media solutions without knowing whether or not you’re making a difference in your bottom line or not. This article is the first of many that will teach you how to make the most of your time AND make sure you are using your time wisely.
30 Minute Twitter Solution
1) Start by downloading TweetDeck. If you’ve never used any Adobe Air products before, you’ll also need to download Adobe Air. This could take 5 minutes or so, so take this time to go grab yourself a cup of coffee or continuing to prep for your day.
2) Once TweetDeck is installed, launch the application, log in with your Twitter userID and password, and click on the X to remove the Direct Messages (DM) column. DMs are made to distract you, and don’t need to be answered right away if you only have 30 minutes. This will leave Replies and All Friends. You’ll want these columns open all the time, because you know why you’re using Twitter for business or you’re using Twitter for personal reasons. If you’ve only got 30 minutes, you can only choose 1 reason, and stick with it for this session.
3) Click on the Search button on the top, and add 2 new columns for 2 of your keywords. I keep Social Media and Milwaukee as my searches. You search for what’s important to you. This will give you 4 columns.
4) Look at the @replies. See if there is anything there worth replying back to. Say thanks to a few folks who’ve said hey to you, especially if they’ve pointed new friends your way. Say hello to at least 5 people.
5) Re-tweet 2 links you see from existing people you follow. You can do this by mousing over someone’s picture, and clicking on the arrow that says “Retweet <username’s> post”
You should be at 15 minutes now, if you’re careful. If you’re faster than that, good for you! You may finish early, or you may expand steps 6 and 7 a bit.
6) Read through the first search panel that you subscribed to. Unless it’s a totally obscure search, you will have at least a screen full of stuff. Click on 3 links (they’ll open in a new browser window not in Tweetdeck). If they’re useful, go back to TweetDeck and re-tweet them (like in step 5). If not, click on 2 more links and skim 2 more. Try to share at least 1 useful re-tweet.
7) Pick 2 people in this stream to follow and follow them.
8) Read through the second search panel that you subscribed to. Unless it’s a totally obscure search, you will have at least a screen full of stuff. Click on 3 links (they’ll open in a new browser window not in Tweetdeck). If they’re useful, go back to TweetDeck and re-tweet them (like in step 5). If not, click on 2 more links and skim 2 more. Try to share at least 1 useful re-tweet.
9) Pick 2 people in this stream to follow and follow them.
10) Share one quick tip for today with your followers.
With any extra time:
11) Respond to a few more folks who Replied to you.
12) Follow a few more people.
13) Click and share a few more useful links from your searches or your followers.
14) Ask a question of your followers, and return later to collect your answers.
What would YOU do with 30 minutes to spend on Twitter?
Please follow me on Twitter. I’m @philgerb, and if you found this useful, please Re-Tweet is using the widget on the blog. Thanks!
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I can’t “X” out the DMs. I love the secret parts of anything, so I love DMs on Twitter.
Hi Phil .. thanks for making everything so simple .. and setting the instructions out so well, also for making suggestions as how best to ‘work’ Twitter.
Thanks – have a good day
Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters
Phil –
Great resource, even for more advanced Twitter users.
My suggestion: on TweetDeck, I have a column called “Leaders” which I populated with the people I consider “leaders” in the field of social networking and/or careers. (You’re on the leader board, for example.) There are about 35 names on there right now, and doing that allows me to easily follow what the top thought leaders are saying about my topic.
Thanks for another super helpful post.
Awesome suggestion Joan! Thanks for sharing it! This will be included in my next revision for sure!
Can you please elaborate on what a “retweet” is? I understand HOW you do it, but what happens WHEN you do it? Thanks Phil!
When you “re-tweet” you are basically taking a tweet someone else wrote, and sharing it with your network. This exposes your network to people and ideas they may not be following already.
Does that help?
Are you familiar with using hashtags to have a topic trend? I am told that if you retweet anything with a hashtag, Twitter will not count that tweet. I am told the reason is that Twitter sees the “RT” as possible spam.
Is this true?
When trying to get a topic to trend, you ask your network to retweet. If Twitter isn’t counting the “RT”s…..you’re kind of spinning your wheels.
For Mac users, the TweetDeck close equivalent is Destroy Twitter. Seriously. A fabulous program created as part of a dissertation. If you have a Mac, it’s the application to get.
Maggie – I use the hashtags all the time for topic trending, and I don’t think it counts as spam (or I’d be screwed). I don’t think RT is spam either, and I see Twitter count these all the time.
Do a Twitter search for philgerb and you’ll see how often I do this, and it seems like they all count to me.
Thanks Phil for the answer about the retweets – I do this on linked in all the time, copying articles posted in one of my groups to another group that I manage (with credit of course). look out, here the retweets come!
You’re welcome Julie.
And look out, Monday will feature an article about how to job search using Twitter. If memory serves, you are the asker of that question
Thanks Phil. Have a great weekend!
Phil, as a (relatively) new tweeter, this 30-minute Twitter solution is really fantastic. You lay it all out in such an understandable way. Because I went on my own and figured out TweetDeck before I read your post, it took me four times as long…I am definitely sending this to some friends who have been asking me “how to do twits”
Thanks Julie. Glad you found that helpful. I’ll be sharing my slides on this too so folks can see it in a more visual way.