Don’t Understand Twitter? Get TweetDeck

Twitter is a bit hard to figure out at first. Maybe after a whole day of looking at it. Twitter is a tool that can help your new business gain credence, popularity, traffic, leads and sales. It’s worth getting to know what Twitter is all about – but, in it’s raw form at Twitter.com you might be having some trouble figuring out what in the world it’s good for.

Thank god for TweetDeck. Tweetdeck is an application separate from Twitter, but it enables you to use Twitter in a way that makes a lot of sense – and in a way that facilitates learning and getting things done.

Join Twitter. Then download Tweetdeck software and come back here.

Read this and then go back and figure TweetDeck out with the new information you learned.

When Tweetdeck pops open it doesn’t automatically give you a place to write your messages. You see columns and some settings buttons but it’s still rather unintuitive for new business owners like yourself. It is for everyone – go figure.

Click the bubble that looks like a cartoon character is speaking in the upper left hand corner of your TD screen. BING! A chat box appears. You’ll need to do this each time you open the application for some reason. I haven’t found a way to automate it yet – if you do, please let me know.

You can type your message in the box and hit send. If you have no followers your message will go nowhere! Better get some followers first. Go to http://search.twitter.com. Search on topics maybe relevant to your business products and see what people are saying. Follow some of those that you want to keep up with. Eventually some people will start following you. Don’t ask them to – just follow a lot of people and you’ll get followed back. It helps to create a profile at Twitter.com that explains who you are, what you do, and a link to your website or some other profile. People want to know who they’re following.

Once you have that accomplished you can tweet (write a message) and send it to your followers.

Now, notice on the top left the icon for “search”. Try it. Tweetdeck adds a column to your desktop and you can now monitor your search on an almost real-time basis. There is some delay in when you view – up to 10 minutes I think it is. You can set the time delay in “settings” on the top right side – a link.

Notice that when you search on a topic you can see what people are saying about the topic? You can jump into the conversation with them too if you choose – they need not be following you. Be careful to not be offensive or you might get the boot from Twitter.com as people can report aggressive tendencies.

Can you see how this tool might be amazing for your new business? Here is a new set of people that have probably never heard of you or your products and you’re able to speak directly with them about it if you want. After a couple short chats you might ask if they want to receive a free ebook about your products in exchange for joining your email list…. lead generation, you know? The possibilities are not endless, but there are many reasons why new business owners will want to get up to speed with Twitter and TweetDeck as soon as possible. Some companies are running their entire business from Twitter already.

Get to work!