DO MORE: Learn How To Use Twitter! Part TWO!

In the last post about how to use Twitter, I explained some basics, the first being how to make connections. Now, I am going to show how I use the powerful application TweetDeck and some directory sites to manage all the people I follow.

Tweetdeck is one of the most popular applications out there for handling a large amount of followers. You can sync it to your iPhone as well so you’ll always have your entire Twitter universe wherever you go. Among its many functions, the best thing about Tweetdeck is how easy it is to manage all the people you’re following into groups. This is useful if you simply just follow different groups of people and want to be able to read about one group at a time or if you’re using Twitter as a marketing tool.

As I explained before, you can use sites like TwitDir and WeFollow to find new followers. I’ll show you how get your followers from both sites then and how to simply add them to Tweetdeck and group them at the same time.

Finding people using TwitDir

As you can see, TwitDir lets you find people in many different ways. You can find people in “NYC” or maybe people who have the term “artist” in their description. Once you decide how you want to search, you’ll get the following page:

You’ll get the most popular results, plus stats on each user. From here, I do the following to add them to categories on Tweetdeck:

1. Open a user’s account in a new window.
2. Read their description. It’s best to double check to see what each user is about. Just because MTV is from NYC and has a lot of followers, you won’t be able to market yourself to MTV, right? Make sure you follow people you can actually interact with if you’re using Twitter for marketing.
3. Copy their Twitter name from their page. It’s located right next to their picture.
4. Open Tweetdeck.
5. Click the Group button to add a new group for your category. If you already have a group you want to add a new member to, in this case my NYC group, just click on the group title on it’s column on Tweetdeck.

6. You’ll see the list of your group name and a giant list of everyone you’re already following on Twitter. From this list, you can check off people to add to that group. If you’re adding a new member to an existing group, paste their name into the Filter field. When you do that, it will tell you that you are not following that member and that Tweetdeck can automatically follow that person for you. Click follow and then click save group and that person will be followed by you and will be added to your group of choice.

Finding people using WeFollow

In some ways, WeFollow can be more accurate because its directory is based off tags that Twitter users input about themselves. So if you search for “NYC” you will get results like this:

All these Twitter users added themselves to WeFollow and put in tags about who they are themselves. It then ranks them by the amount of people that are following them. You can also browse how many new followers they gained lately and what their other tags are, amongst other info. Again you can simply copy a user’s name once you decide you’d like to add them and input them into Tweetdeck the same way.

I hope this expands on how you can use Twitter much better. I prefer Tweetdeck because it gives you everything you need in neat columns with tons of options. You have groups, @ mentions and direct messages all in one shot, browsable altogether in one application. More importantly, you can take it mobile on your iPhone and I happen to think the interface is much cleaner on their mobile application. All your actions sync to your Tweetdeck account so any changes made from your desktop or iPhone will be saved throughout both.

What do you think? Do you have any more tips to add? And feel free to add me on Twitter, I’m @ohjefframos.

And don’t forget to add my Facebook Fan Page to keep up to date with all my postings, links and discussions!

Popularity: 1% [?]