Social Media Cool Find of the Week

June 20th, 2009 by Elizabeth Beskin | Share Blog

Instead of creating a long post of earth shattering info every week, I’ve decided to let you know about one really cool find that I’ve come across in social media.

I’m researching and learning all the time. It still amazes me when something really simple pops up on my radar — and makes total sense.

Here’s “This Week’s Find” – or perhaps it’s a revelation:

Did you know that you are helping your search engine optimization by commenting on other people’s blogs and posts and including your website url? Any time you enter your website info, you are creating a back link. Back links are one of the keys to increasing your search engine visibility. So comment on blogs when you have something to say and enter your website when asked! (And even when you’re not asked.)

On the Twitter front, I’ve started a list of the best Twitter tools I use and why I use them.

The other night at some ungodly hour, I started a Twitter conversation with Rachel Levy@bostonmarketer about a list of Twitter chats that we had both seen. We came up with the idea of keeping a list of all the cool programs we’ve seen in the past. She sent me her complete compiled list. Its outstanding! Following is my condensed list of some of the Twitter Tools from Rachel’s list that I like best (for Rachel’s complete list check out http://www.rachel-levy.com/confused-by-all-the-twitter-applications-take-2/ )

My comments are in Red

Twitter tools I use

Tweetdeck – I can’t say enough about this program. (agreed!!) Basically, Tweetdeck shows your Twitter feed in columns of information based on your preferences, rather than one long stream. For example, I use the following columns: All tweets, A-list, B-list, event professionals, photographers, and social media experts. A list are the people I learn from and engage in conversation. B list are new friends on twitter that I hope will become A-listers (those I want to keep an eye on). In addition- there are @mentions and direct messages on the same screen. You can also see your Facebook friends’ updates right in the application. You can update your Facebook status directly from here. You can click to see anyone’s profile, and from there add them to a particular column. It has a URL shortener build in, which is invaluable. I find this application the best way to organize the twitter universe. The new Mashable version has a few more statistics and buttons that I feel useful- the best is that you can see follower numbers directly under profile picture.

Twellow – A search program that also searches bios, names and locations. It also has a graphical interface that enables localized searching. VERY useful, if you are trying to find someone, or target particular people. I use this tool once a week to target specific groups and to help clean up my twitter account. Twitter sets limits on the number of people you can follow without having a similar number of follows- your allowed to follow up to 2000, before the first limit. After that, you’re allowed to follow 10% more people than are following you- after that you have to clean up your account if you want to stay targeted.-this program is the one I use to do this. It helps me evaluate whether to continue following if they are not following me back.

Tweetchat – This program aggregates all tweets for a certain hashtag into a chat room. The benefit of using this vs. Twitter Search for hashtags, is that when you write your tweet, you don’t have to add the hashtag, as it is added automatically — a HUGE timesaver and is so much easier. Also, you can tweet directly from Tweetchat, so there is no need to flip back to twitter to enter a tweet. I use this whenever I’m on a webinar or at an event… amazing! (I agree!)

Tweet Later – You can do numerous things with this site. First, you can use it to set up alerts to track keywords you are interested in. You can also schedule tweets at certain scheduled times. And, you can auto follow or auto DM. I use the scheduled tweets feature.

Twollo – This program finds people for you to follow based on your interests. Twollo will find them and automatically follow them for you.-I find people talking about events and photo albums.

TwitPic – Allows you to easily post a photo on Twitter. Just browse to the photo, and it creates a link. It’s built directly into Tweetdeck, so it’s easy to use from there!

We Follow – A user powered Twitter directory that categorizes people into groups, such as social media, marketing, celebrity, politics, etc. (I signed up but have not found it useful yet!)

Bit.ly - Shorten, share and track your links. I find this site to be super helpful in trying to determine the success of a tweet when linking to articles on your blog. Great for tracking best times to tweet.

Twitter tools I plan on trying: (Rachel recommends these!)

Friendfeed – “Helps you discover and discuss interesting stuff that your friends and family find on the web.” Basically, it allows you to see what your friends are sharing (and share yours with them) on various websites across the internet, including web pages, videos, photos, and music. It’s used for sharing, idea generation, conversation, marketing, etc. It’s used for much more than just Twitter. Seems great, but it’s just too much information for me right now. I will probably be an addict at some point soon.

Topify – This is one of my favorite applications! What this application does, is makes your email work much better for you with Twitter. When you receive an email about a new follower, instead of being without any information about the followee, it will include their bio and basic stats. And, directly from the email you can follow the person! It also allows you to reply to a DM directly from email.

Tweepsearch – Similar to Twellow, this program searches bios for a particular keyword. But, it can also search the bios of your followers only, which can be very useful.

Twimailer – Rather than receiving the plain emails from Twitter notifying you of a new follower (include just their name), Twimailer sends you their statistics and their last few tweets. Very cool! To me, the major limitation is that you still have to click through to their profile to follow them. Topify solves that issue, which is why I use that application instead.

Twitterfriends – With TwitterFriends you can …

• find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you.
• visualize the network of your relevant contacts and their contacts
• see who of your Twitter friends are online this very moment
• read some stats about your Twitter account
• take a look at the most conversational Twitterers or those who are posting the most links

Wow, there’s a lot of great information here, but I found it to be too much!

Twitter Search (formerly Summize) – A mandatory for Twitter users. Type in any search term (including AND, OR, quotes) and see what’s happening on Twitter for that search. Also shows you trending topics. Clicking on “Advanced” lets you get more detailed in your search, including tweets from one person to another, date, attitude and place.

Twitseeker – Finds people on Twitter based on what they’re talking about. Cool! I searched for Marketing, and it came up with a list of 20 people who have been tweeting about Marketing. Very useful, especially for my job search.

What the Hashtag? – A wiki that tracks hashtags on Twitter. Great idea, as I so often see hashtags that I don’t know what they are being used for.

I’ll update soon on what I discovered using the new programs-Thank you so much to Rachel Levy…. For her great comprehensive list