This article offers a brief review of TweetDeck, an application that enables users to manage their Twitter social networking messages and contacts.
The dilemma that many Internet marketers face in trying to use social networking tools such as Twitter to promote their business on the Internet is a question. Should they prioritize the network so as to build their brand,
or should they work on developing their business and doing SEO work on their website?
If you want your networking efforts to be effective you need to spend time interacting in conversations with people and contributing to the various conversations that take place on twitter and other social networking platforms. But if you spend too long developing relationships you run the risk of falling behind with essential business development work.
Happily for you though, several applications have been developed to help you manage your twitter account. Recently, a new application called TweetDeck has been launched in beta mode and is proving very popular. Tweet Deck enables ambitious Twitter users to maintain a high level of communicative activity on Twitter without having to spend the whole day tweeting.
What differentiates TweetDeck from previous twitter such as Twhirl or Snitter, is its ability to display information about users in up to ten different columns or categories. This allows you to define and label different groups of followers. When somebody in a particular category posts a Tweet on Twitter, that Tweet will appear in the appropriate column on Tweet Deck.
The default setting for TweetDeck is three columns which split the tweets into messages that appear on your tweet page, @replies you send out, and direct messages that you send and receive.
At the top of the TweetDeck page you will find some icons which you can click on to create different types of new columns. For example if you click the group button a new column will appear with a list of the people who are following you. To create a specific group all you have to do is click on the people who you want to include and choose a group name. This feature allows you to easily manage several conversations at the same time.
Another great feature of this application is the way you can run multiple keyword search columns. Simply set up your keywords and each time the keyword crops up in a tweet, that message will appear in your search columns. The beauty of this is that you do not even have to be following the person that posted the Tweet. If you liked the message that particular "tweeter" sent out, you can easily add the user to one of your categories.
Use TweetDeck even for just a short time and you'll quickly appreciate that this can be a great way to find and network with people who have something in common with yourself, or who may be in the market for the products that you offer.
Because of the number of columns TweetDeck can handle, it's window can take up quite a lot of space. However, when you minimize it, it is easy to monitor via a small pop-up window that appears in the top right hand corner of your screen, and if you allow it, it will give a little Tweet each time a message is received.
TweetDeck offers busy Internet marketers a useful way to manage a large number of twitter messages in a single sitting and allows them to spend more time focusing on the development of their business, services, SEO and website development, without which there would be no point in building a large social network in the first place.
To find out more about TweetDeck and download it to your hard drive, see http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
