Are you using Twitter to market your business?

[lav]

46 followers today! Im starting to get some followers now who I havent followed first wow!. Also Im tellingg my clients now so picking up a couple there as well. Havent yet installed tweetdeck as I have been flat out like a lizard drinking!!!

[Coach Morse]

I'm following you now George so you have to stay if just to entertain me. What I found with Twitter is the more I've used it the more I've liked it. When I say used it more I don't mean I'm on it all day. Some days I never open a Twitter client and the days I do it's usually a few minutes here and a few minutes there.

But the longer I've been with it the more ways I've seen how it can be useful. You do need to find people you're interested in knowing or at least interesting in what they're tweeting and it can take some time to figure out what you want to say, but it does come if you stick with it.

you got it...

okay, newbie question... what is tweetdeck and how would/should I use it?

[vangogh]

TweetDeck is a desktop client that accesses Twitter. As you use Twitter more you'll find it's quicker and easier to use one of the many desktop clients than it is to visit the Twitter site directly. The desktop clients will usually add a lot of helpful features and you can keep them open on your desktop in the background.

TweetDeck wasn't the first desktop client, but it was the first to introduce groups. You can organize the people you're following into groups which makes it easier to follow more people. Maybe you have a group for family and one for friends and one for different industries you follow. The desktop clients also let you perform and save searches so you can follow what anyone (not just those you're following) have to say about a particular topic.

TweetDeck runs on top of AdobeAir so you need that installed to run it. You can get both from the TweetDeck site and I believe if you just click to install TweetDeck it will pull in AdobeAir for you.

TweetDeck is not the only desktop client, though it is one of the more popular ones. Many run on AdobeAir, though some will be native Mac or Windows or even iPhone applications. Here's a recent post from Mashable comparing 19 different desktop apps for Twitter. The apps really do make it much easier and much more useful to interact with Twitter and some will also connect to other sites like Facebook so you can interact with several social media communities through one application.

[Coach Morse]

thanks...

[KristineS]

I've tried Twhirl, which just won't work on my laptop at home for some reason. I tried Tweetdeck here at the office and it didn't seem to behave.

I used TwitterFox at home, simply because I just want something that pops up the latest Tweets on one particular feed. Seesmic works nicely for me at work because I have and follow multiple accounts there.

I have to confess I haven't done a lot of sorting or searching yet, so I'm using all my Twitter clients for very basic things.

[vangogh]

The grouping probably isn't a big deal unless you're following too many people. How many depends on how many you can handle. Plus you use different accounts which in a way groups people.

Definitely try the searches. At the very least it might give you some ideas for blog posts.

[vangogh]

Even household appliances are tweeting. And one Texas Instruments employee can turn the lights off in his office by sending his office a tweet

[lav]

And one Texas Instruments employee can turn the lights off in his office by sending his office a tweet

Bad luck to the guy who has to stay at the office and wait for his tweet to come thru. @jackatoffice can you turn the lights off.....NOW!

haha! at least I amuse myself

[vangogh]

Funny. Did you check the article? Seems like some people are reprogramming appliances and rewiring things to accept instructions through Twitter. While I can see the advantage of being able to turn off the oven if you forget, I'm not sure Twitter is the best delivery mechanism for that message.

[KristineS]

I don't know that I see the point of delivering the instructions through Twitter. I know some of the cell phones and stuff can do that kind of thing now and that seems like it would make more sense. Who wants to read your Tweet that tells the lights to turn off?