Harnessing Twitter’s power with TweetDeck

Companies have written off Twitter for years. But in 2017, it’s back with a vengeance.

Twitter is the home of real-time social media engagement with fans and customers worldwide. The channel can be a challenge to manage, given so many can’t quite figure out what’s going on.

Enter TweetDeck.

This free tool makes life much easier for social media managers, bringing streams of tweets in an organized format. All it takes is some thoughtful customization to keep a company on track with its audience and ahead of its competitors.

Check it out at tweetdeck.twitter.com.

Let’s add columns to make TweetDeck do most of the work for us. I’ve put together suggestions in the slides below.

Click any thumbnail to see suggestions at full size.

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15 options for new columns

Home is a user’s timeline: Here are tweets from all the users followed by @YallConnect. Pro tip: Build engagement and good will by retweeting others.

Filter tweets by search terms and other criteria. Pro tip: Quickly jump to tweets mentioning your brand or a competitor, or an important hashtag.

Notifications include new followers, Likes and links to your tweets. Mentions is strictly @replies and @mentions.

See what tweets your brand has sent, especially if you’re part of a team managing an account.

Direct Messages: Private messages from followers. Pro tip: Turn on setting to allow DMs from anyone, even if they’re not following.

Use custom searches to target people with questions and great info. Pro tip: Follow a Twitter chat like #blogchat.

Advanced: Monitor what your followers are doing: tweets they like, lists they maintain, users they follow.

See what your brand will tweets, or what colleagues have scheduled. Pro tip: An editorial calendar keeps everyone on the same page.

Twitter lists put groups of users into one stream. Add a list you create or another user’s list. Pro tip: Create lists around top customers, thought leaders, competitors or colleagues.

Follow a competitor to see what they’re sharing and how they respond (or don’t respond) to customer queries and complaints.

Or follow a user for fun, like @CuteEmergency.

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For Chrome users, two free extensions can enhance the TweetDeck experience: BetterTweetDeck 3 and ColorDeck for TweetDeck.

We can add, delete or fine-tune columns in TweetDeck as needed. The important first step, though, is to set up the right columns to monitor, making Twitter an indispensable tool in our social media marketing.

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