Software Development Management
For those of you in the US, we hope you have a happy and safe Thanksgiving with your friends and family (for those elsewhere, have a restful weekend).
We’re spending the next few days with our own friends and family so regular posting will resume on Monday.
(photo by ExperienceLA @ Flickr CC)
Twitter can be a powerful tool for getting your message out, but it also can become part of your business intelligence arsenal. TweetScan can help you keep track of what is being said about your company and products and get updates via email, rss or on their website. You can scan up to five phrases for daily or weekly delivery. Best of all, there are no ads or spam in the emails. It also can be used to check for lost replies and direct messages. TweetScan’s homepage has a keyword cloud representing hot topics on Twitter. You can also search for specific keywords by particular users.
Using TweetScan for business intelligence may take a bit of experimentation. Obvious keywords are your twitter username, company name and any brand names for products or services. Less obvious keywords are those which may represent hot topics in your particular industry. For those, try looking at industry blogs, forums and publications to see what’s hot and then use the TweetScan search functionality to see what people are saying about it.
Obviously this type of business intelligence works best if your industry has a large number of Twitter users. But it can still be useful for keeping track of general industry topics. Twitter’s usage is also growing fairly quickly since it easy to tweet from mobile phones, browsers and desktop applications. From a business intelligence standpoint, it is a rich environment for research because Twitter users tend to be actively engaged in the community (even if they are only broadcasting and not interacting).
If you use Twitter for Business, please share in the comments how you keep track of conversations and important topics.
Technorati Tags: twitter, social networks, social media, internet marketing, internet consulting, internet business strategy
If you’ve decided to Twitter for your business, you may now be a bit overwhelmed with the influx of tweets. How do you filter through them and keep track of contacts and conversations that matter? TweetDeck is an excellent tool for business twittering that will bring some order to the chaos.
The genius behind TweetDeck is multiple panels that can be configured to make it easy to keep track of conversations. First you have a panel that has the feed from all the people you are following. Next there are panels for replies and direct messages, respectively. To keep track of certain people, you can create groups and quickly add anyone to a group. Lastly, to see what is hot in the Twitterosphere (Tweetosphere?), you can add a TwitScoop panel which will give you a tag cloud of the hot topics.
Managing contacts is also easy. Clicking on the name under a tweet will bring up a user’s profile right inside a panel where you can see all their information and tweets, follow/unfollow them, or add them to a group. There’s also a little plus sign under a tweet which will allow you to quickly add a person to a group.
Twittering (tweeting?) is easy with a update section that includes a way to shorten urls and add twitpics. With each tweet you have the option to retweet, favorite, direct message or reply, making having conversations a cornerstone of TweetDeck’s functionality. And using Twitter for business is all about having conversations.
Technorati Tags: twitter, social networks, social media, internet marketing, internet consulting, internet business strategy