Social Media is all about building Relationships. People do business with people who they Know Like and Trust. This is an age old adage that still rings true for social media more than ever.

I often get the question of ‘How do you keep connected with all of your followers? and what do you do if you really  want to stay connected to some more than others?’

This will generally come up just after you have been playing around with twitter for only a few weeks, as more and more people you dont know, join your network.
I use a free application called TweetDeck, which sits on your desktop. 

The best bits of TweetDeck are its ability to show you everything you want to see all at one time like a dashboard, in an organized column format. It defaults with columns of @Replies, DM’s, and AllFriends. You can choose to keep or discard those columns (and bring them back again if you choose).

Its power becomes apparent when you start creating your own columns. This allows you to ‘file’ your follows. Want a steady stream of life coach tweets? Hit the ‘group’ button, and select all the life coaches you follow. You can do this to create columns of Industry experts, speaker coaches, celebrities, mentors, family and friends – and organize the columns on your screen by moving them left or right. If you have 5 columns built, just use the sliding bar on the bottom. If you keep TweetDeck running, it keeps a  record of tweets, allowing you to go to a column after being away, and catch up. Caution: while friends, DM’s and @Replies are default settings, if you delete a custom column you must recreate from scratch – so think carefully before hitting that delete button!

TweetDeck also allows you to isolate individuals you follow by clicking their name at the bottom of a tweet, giving you a list of their stats and a log of recent tweets. Did your friend just @Reply someone you don’t know? Click their name in the tweet and they will show up as well, allowing you to follow, and even assign them to a column of your choice.

The other cool thing that Tweetdeck does is let you see your Facebook friends’ status updates at the same time. You may be able to see in the picture that i am quickly and easily able to see whats going on in both Twitter and facebook.

Looking for people talking on a particular topic? Create a search column on your term, and see a stream of Twitterers perfect for your list.

I will be creating a video on how to use this fanatstic application in the coming few posts so keep an eye out for it.

Happy Tweeting…

If you would like listen in to the free webinar that I am conducting over the next 6 weeks on How to grow your Business using Social Media then please register here

I have also created my new Business Ascentials Fan page so please join me where i will be adding some additional tips , tricks and Information too.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 6:51 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.