MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Article at our sister blog here :
http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=47

Until next time,

MKLINK

What is TweetDeck And Why Should I Use It?
http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Want help? Get your month trial : register at http://mklink.com/getstarted

Let’s start off with the problem. With so many people Tweeting and posting to Facebook, (potentially about you or your business), it’s important to know what’s going on. (Ideally, without going mad or wasting too much production time)

Take an analogy of CB radio, very popular in the 70′s and 80′s and still around today. All the airwaves are filled with “chatter” yet you need listen to one person to know what’s being said. Imagine trying to listen to hundreds of people at the same time – very confusing!

Of course with Facebook, Twitter and the like, that’s exactly what you’re doing and so given that we’re business people, we need a way to organise this and make it easier to manage.

Tweetdeck was invented as a way to keep your sanity and basically keep things in one place.(It was then bought out by Twitter directly for nearly £25 Million)

First of all the application itself; you can download it to your computer and run it from your machine or you can use it online. The latter option obviously means you can access your account from different computers, like being able to access webmail or other cloud based applications from different locations.

Currently, the two main things you can load are facebook and Twitter. Although I’d be surprised if LinkedIn and other Social goodies weren’t added as an upgrade soon. Straight away you can see what’s being buzzed so that you can be alerted to stuff as it happens and react accordingly.

Tip : Complain about BT on Twitter and see how quickly they react!

Once you’re in, you can add “columns” to your ccount and each column can be a stream from an individual twitter or facebook wall to a filtered search for a particular keyword – perhaps a product name or company name.

Using these columns you can follow multiple accounts or see your messages or output filtered streams of information.

For example, you could have one column set aside to display all the buzz about the keyword “South Cerney Angling Club”. If you were a member or a fisherman or a journalist or a local farmer – to see what’s going on.

It’s all about enabling different stakeholders to narrow dwn the focus and see(hear?) whats being said about particular topics.

(Note, you can also use Google Alerts for some of these functions as well)

These columns then let you see in real time what’s currently “trending” ie being posted, tweeted, retweeted etc.

At any time, you can jump right in and reply to a tweet, send a private message, follow someone, unfollow them and do everything you could in Twitter directly. Again, I’m hoping this functionaility extends entirely acroos Facebook and LinkedIn, rather than just the partial integration they have now.

Retweeting other people’s content is also ridiculously easy and this tool saves you having to trawl through all their content.

By the way, here’s a tip if you want to be seen as proactive, simply use the search function and use the question mark “?” function to search through posts of people or businesses that you’d like to help (potential clients etc). This will bring up all their questions that they’ve asked – and of course you can now answer them – again without having to trawl through everything.

Organising people that you follow into groups is also a real time-saver. here are some suggested groupings you might like to make :

[Personal-Friends/Family]
[Personal-Hobbies/Interest]
[Personal-Other]

[Business-Suppliers]
[Business-Colleagues/Staff]
[Business-Clients]
[Business-Competitors]
[Business-Leads[]
[Business-Other]

This way, not only are you alerted as usual when someone posts something but it also lets you know which group they are in – saving time and hassle. Great for keeping an eye on employees, competitors, family members – you name it.

To Recap, Here’s 8 Quick Features/benefits of Tweetdeck

1 – Keep Everything in One Place.

2 – Enables Photos, URL Shortening etc via external services (e.g. bit.ly)

3 – Track those your replies (the ‘@’ on Twitter) plus your direct messages too.

4 – Keep things organised into groups and columns.

5 – See and react to tweets and Facebook updates immediately.

6 – Manage Multiple Twitter accounts if necessary

7 – Filter out hashtags (#). Again this is a filtering/screening boon.

And of course, it doesn’t cost you anything…

Let us help you manage your web marketing – either training you or getting it done for you : http://mklink.com/getstarted

Until next time,

Register at http://mklink.com/getstarted
Mike Knight – MKLINK

p.s. If you can see why now is a great time to make sure your web marketing works, is up to date, get in touch today….

How to make the most of your PC in terms of accessibility add-ons and features.

Full article here : http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=44

Until next time,

Mike Knight.

Check this out on our sister blog all about usability.
In this article, we look at the common ground between people, SEO spiders and screen readers…

http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=38

Until next time…

Mike

…with some details on our sister blog :

http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=34

See you soon,

mk

Just wrote an article about the different types of user that could be accessing your website.
Full article here : http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=22

Until next time,

Mike

Uh Oh – Google is planning yet another step in world domination!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16511794

mk

On our sister blog, there is an article we’ve just uploaded. It’s a useful read because it echoes a lot of the best practice for accessibility anyway.

Find the update at http://www.usableusability.com.au/usability/accessibility

’til next time,

Mike Knight

I published an article about some issues many people wouldn’t consider when choosing website usability test participants for a remote study which Is here on my other blog ;
http://www.usableusability.com.au/usability/usability

If you need help with any web usability requirements, get in touch!

Mike Knight

I’ve put togewther an article here that I think people that people should read. Legislation is hotting up folks…!

http://www.usableusability.com.au/usability/accessibility

’til next time

Mike