How to use TweetDeck - Mike's Recommended Twitter Application

Blogging Art and Practice
A blogging coach’s tips and techniques for a better blog
By Kathy Purdy

TweetDeck is the most useful application for managing Twitter that I’ve found. While many call it “intuitive,” some of my clients are intimidated by it. Perhaps they don’t realize it has tooltip-type hints when you mouse over the various buttons, or maybe the tips don’t explain enough. For those of you who want more than tooltips, here is a basic introduction to TweetDeck.

Organize your screen with these buttons

The following nine buttons function as toggles. That is, click once to open, and click again to close. They are found at the upper left of your screen. (Where appropriate, I’ve linked to some tutorials on another site that explain certain functions in more detail.)


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1. Click here to type a message (status update). When you click this button, several other buttons become available which I will collectively refer to as the tweetbox. They are explained below.
2. This opens or closes a column that shows all updates from everyone you follow. Usually it’s open.
3. Click this button to start a new group.
4. Click here to set up a search column.
5. Click here to start a column that monitors all replies to you. (That is, all messages that have @yourtwittername in them.)
6. If you want to have a column of all your direct messages, click here.
7. This button sets up a column with all your favorited tweets.
8. Twitscoop enables you to see what the hot twitter topics are.
9. 12seconds is “the best place online for video status updates.” When you click this button it will ask you for your login.

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Other Twitter tutorials

The advantage of a still tutorial such as this one is that you can refer to it as you’re using TweetDeck. But a video tutorial can help give you the big picture. I chose these particular tutorials because they illustrated features of TweetDeck that I haven’t covered in this tutorial. You will find a lot more videos on YouTube about TweetDeck, but most are of poor quality.

* How to Create a Group and Use the Search Function
* Rearranging Columns, Search Function, Change Settings (including colors)
* New features in the latest version 0.21b
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Look for the links to Ian Dodsworth Interview, the originator of Tweetdeck.
I love Tweetdeck and Find Grouping makes Twitter so much more managable.

Mike
http://www.twitter.com/mike1mb