Managing Your Social Media through TweetDeck

Managing your personal Twitter account, that of your company's and keeping track of industry buzz can be complicated. Thankfully there are applications that make managing not only your Twitter accounts, but all of your social media, a lot easier.

TweetDeck is probably our favorite. It serves a desktop application that can manage your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts, all on one screen. TweetDeck also allows you to set up multiple accounts within each network, so you can keep track of your company's Twitter account and your personal one at the same time. This is especially important if you use your personal account to comment on industry news and topics as well.

While setting up TweetDeck is relatively easy, it's not really useful unless you take full advantage of it. Here are a few tips to help you get started using TweetDeck and use it to your advantage.

The install process is pretty straightforward and will easily get you setup with an initial account.  From there, you can start configuring TweetDeck to your needs. For example, to add your company's Twitter account go to the top right-hand corner of the application and click on the settings button and navigate to the Accounts section. TweetDeck will prompt you for your company's Twitter username and password.

Your company's columns will load to the right of all your current columns on TweetDeck, which you can navigate through by using the arrows at the bottom of the application.

In order to further take advantage of TweetDeck you can set up columns that relate to your business and industry. TweetDeck allows you to create columns based upon searches by topic or keyword. It will also automatically create a column for hashtag topics you wish to follow once you click on the hashtag.

Creating columns around topics and searches is one of TweetDeck’s most powerful features, allowing you to always keep an eye on the social media chatter around your brand and industry.  The best way to start is by thinking of topics or keywords that would relate to your organization. For example, an economic development program for a specific city may want to set up a column that contains tweets mentioning the city or local businesses.

To add a column for a certain topic, click on the 'plus' button in the top left-hand corner of the application. It will ask you from which account you'd like to conduct this search, and provides a search bar for keywords and topics. After searching for your topic TweetDeck will load a new column containing the topic.

By following topics related to your organization you can find new stakeholders important to your organization and learn more about what people are talking about, giving you a chance to become part of the conversation.

TweetDeck has a lot of other great features that are advantageous to users that you can learn more about from their website. They also have applications for the Droid, and ones coming soon for the iPhone and iPad so you can have a hold on all of your social media accounts form location on all of your devices. Do you already use TweetDeck? Is there one feature that you find even more useful? Let us know!