Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category
March 29th, 2010 | 
Author: If you are like me, you don’t exactly have ‘free time’. Twitter is a tool I use, and have a love/hate relationship with. I love it for marketing and getting the word out there, and building new relationships with people I would otherwise never meet, but I hate it because there is so much I know I miss! There are so many great links posted, good information and also retweets and mentions that I some how don’t always have time to get to.
Well, to help keep me up to date, I use a service called Social Oomph. I signed up for it almost a year ago when I first got into using Twitter but have really found it useful the past six months during which I have tweeted more and more on the social networking site. Social Oomph allows you to sign up and create an account and link it to your Twitter feeds. It will track when you are mentioned, when you get Direct Messages, or when your tweets are reposted by someone else (retweeted).
Simply sign up for a free account, then click on Social Accounts, Add New Account, then Add Twitter.
Once you do this, you will be prompted to authenticate with Twitter which allows SocialOomph to connect with your account. Once you have done this, the following screen will appear. You have options to autofollow people that follow up, and send them a message directly at the same time. Be careful how you use this. Many people using Twitter hate this, including me. It’s impersonal and even worse, if it’s someone trying to sell to you it’s really offputting. You may notice that in the screenshot below, I do have a message and I am auto following people. Well, true, and here is where I view it as the exception. This account listed is one for our local city project, New Lawrenceville. The message is to inform people about an upcoming event we are having. Hopefully it won’t appear as salesy or offensive! Make up your own mind about setting that message.
Finally, you can then see all of the times you are mentioned and who mentioned you. One of the settings for your account allows you to have an e-mail sent to you at the end of the day, listing all the times you were mentioned. I like this feature as it allows me to see who has retweeted my tweets or sent me a direct message, even if I have been busy with other things throughout the day and not noticed this.
Finally, they do have a paid version with some fantastic features that I wouldn’t mind trying, but after the free trial, at $30, not sure I would be willing to fork out that much each month.
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When you set up a Twitter account, you can pick the colors you want for your background and text and sidebars. However, it doesn’t allow for too much creativity. One service that is out there you can use is www.freetwitterdesigner.com. Below is a screenshot of my Twitter account showing the background I created using this service.
When you get to the site, it will prompt you to sign in with Twitter. Once signed in and authenticated, it will take you back to the website. From here, the first screen has you select the canvas you want for your background. Going with the plain white one will allow you to pick a different color if you wish. The next screen gives you all kinds of options to add text, shapes and images. You can also pick the colors for your sidebar, links and text. Play around, drag things around and move them where you want to see them. It shows your Twitter profile in the middle so you get an immediate idea of how this will look.
When you are done, simply click on Generate Image. The image can then be saved, or exported directly to Twitter. It’s easier just to export it directly to Twitter. Once you click the button, that’s it! It’s all taken care of for you. How easy is that!
If you look at the About page at Purple Star Consulting you will see we have our Tweets scrolling through on the sidebar. This allows people visiting our site to know we are on Twitter and also see some of the things we are talking about. Perhaps it will entertain them, maybe even interest them enough to start following us. You may have seen this used on many other sites and wondered how you can get this on your own.
How do I set up a Twitter Widget?
Widgets can be used to pull in information from another website or application directly onto your own site. You can get widgets for so many different business related sites, Facebook and LinkedIin included. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts to find out how to do just that. For today though, we are looking at Twitter. And, bonus, you don’t really need to know too much about web design or coding to do this (although a little does help!). Log into your account, then look at the very bottom of the page, and click on the link for Goodies:
From here you can select to create a Widget for your account. Buttons can be used if you just want someone to know you are on Twitter but not pull in all of the content from your Twitter page.
Next you will be taken to a page that allows you to put in your own settings to get the look and feel you want for your site. Keep your web page in mind while you are doing this and picking the colors and size. You want something that fits and makes sense. First, pick your Preferences. Those in the screenshot below are what I prefer, but by all means, go with something different! Polling for new results each time someone visits your site is a good idea. You don’t want it to be a stagnant old list. Including a scroll bar really depends on if you pull in a lot of tweets or only decide to show a few. I like the look of tweets that come through in a timed interval. So, every few seconds a new tweet shows up. If you don’t like that approach, simply choose load all tweets and everything will come in at once. For this you would definitely need to include a scroll bar. If you are doing the timed interval, select how often you want a new tweet to load, how many tweets and if you want the results to be looped. Depending on how frequently you are tweeting, you might want to put 20 or 30 as the number of tweets, or less or more as you see fit.
Next, look at the Appearance of the widget. This allows you to set the colors of the text, links and background. If you click on each section, a little color chart will appear. You can either use that to make your selection, or type in the HEX color if you are familiar with this method. It’s pretty easy as the colors will change in the widget example displayed as you select new colors. Play around until you get something that works and you like the look of.
Finally, set your Dimensions. You won’t be able to see the new size from here, you just need to trust that it will be sized once you put the code onto your website. You can now see what you final widget will look like.
The last step is to get the code for your widget. At the very bottom you will see a button for getting the code. Simply select all of the text and copy it to your clip board (simple right click with the mouse to select copy, or Ctrl+C).
Next you have a few choices, and it really depends on your comfort level and the way your website is set up:
- Send the code to your web designer and tell them where you would like it on your website.
- If you have access to your own pages and are comfortable modifying the code, paste it in directly where you would like to see the Twitter widget
- If you have WordPress, simply log in, go to Appearance on the left navigation, click on Widgets, and use a Text Widget and simply paste the code in there.
You will notice at the top of the code it details the width and the height of the widget so if it needs changing slightly you can easily do it yourself. The interval can be modified too if you find it to be too fast or too slow as the new tweets show up. Just change the first digit. Need help? Either e-mail info@purplestarconsulting.com or just post your questions below. Happy Tweeting!
Yesterday I talked about using TweetDeck to organize, update and review your Tweets. However, there are times when I still need to log into my Twitter account on the http://www.twitter.com website. I actually have 3 accounts that I need to keep up with though. One I use to keep in touch with family back in England, one for a local community group, and one for Purple Star Consulting. When logged in, there is no way to know which of those accounts you are actually signed into at that moment in time. Obviously you want to be sure you don’t send the wrong tweet out under the wrong profile!
So, to get around this, I wanted to share something that my brother wrote, that I think is pretty cool! He wrote a small Greasemonkey script. This will only work if you use Firefox as your browser. You can get the Greasemonkey plugin installed here pretty quickly. To get the actual script, I am going to send you to his page which has the link in his blog post. If you like geeky things, take a moment to look around his site. He has a lot of really cool things in the works so take note!
Once the script is installed, you will be able to see who you’re logged on as, in the Twitter navigation bar at the top right-hand corner of the screen, at all times. See below for an example.
Twitter can be a little overwhelming, and also time consuming!
There are many great tools out there to help you organize, sort and review your tweets in an effective way. Logging into Twitter online or reviewing your tweets on your phone is fine, but it can take a while to scroll through everything. Also, if like me you moderate several different accounts, it means logging and and back out of each of them. Then there is the concern of posting the wrong tweet when logged into the wrong account!
TweetDeck is the perfect tool to monitor your Twitter accounts, and include access to your Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace accounts too! Go to www.tweetdeck.com and click on the download link. Walk through the download and once complete, (if it doesn’t already open), go ahead and click on the shortcut on your desktop.
You can start entering your Twitter account information from the first screen that opens on TweetDeck. However, if you opt not to, or can’t figure out how to enter more information, simply click on the icon that looks like a wrench at the top right corner. This is for the settings.
You can add multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace accounts. You will need to enter your user name and password for each account. You can also change the standard colors and fonts, notifications and general information in the TweetDeck Settings area.
You can determine the number of columns of Tweets, and updates you wish to see, and you can also determine what is displayed in those columns. From the top left, click on the plus sign icon.
You can then determine the type of account that you want to display. Then decide if you want to show groups, lists, direct messages, replies, mentions and so on.
Now you can simply stay on your desktop, set notifications based on the updates you are interested in seeing, and not have to log in directly to all of your separate accounts. Much easier to use, and less time consuming.
