Have you signed up for Twitter and that’s about as far as you got?

Or maybe you’re using it, but not seeing results and just doing know where to start?

If you join us for the AllTwitter Marketing Conference next month, you’ll not only learn where to start – you’ll leave a pro (especially if you pay close attention during the panel I’m moderating).

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve noticed it as well and took some time to check it out.

If you’ve been thinking of using it, we’ll tell you what’s what. And if you’re already using it, read this before you needlessly annoy the crap out of potential followers.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

They’re either disappearing (for the most part) or following the straight and narrow.

One such tool, that Twitter took to court not too long ago, just announced updates that will put it in compliance with the new and improved Twitter. And its capabilities look pretty handy!

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Wouldn’t it be great to consistently find trusted, highly viral content relevant to your industry that helps establish your company’s standing as a thought leader?

Here’s how you can do just that.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Twitter lists are a crucial resource for organizing the perhaps hundreds of people you follow on Twitter into categorized roundups for quick reference.

If you create a list, it can be private (just for you) or public (so that you can share it).

You can add anyone you like to a Twitter list, even without following them – but it’s best to include accounts that have something in common.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It was a great leveller, and reminded us that what we think about ourselves, especially in the ways that we behave, is often very different to the reality. And the same is often true with social media. Do other people see you in the same way that you see yourself? What about Twitter? Do you really know what you tweet?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I’ve been using Twitter for close to three years. And in that time, a lot has changed, both within the platform itself and the tools we use to manage it. This post will take a look at these tools – specifically, the ones that I use to make Twitter work for me.

Like nearly all users, my first experience with the website was Twitter.com itself – that’s how most of us register, after all. I still use Twitter.com a lot, and will touch on that later. But whereas new Twitter has significantly improved the functionality of Twitter.com, I still do the bulk of my Twittering in apps, both web-based and mobile.

Again like many users, the first Twitter client I used for any great length of time was TweetDeck. (The very first was Twhirl, but that was a short-lived affair.) TweetDeck lends itself to the new user, but after a while I found the software buggy and sluggish. Tweets and entire users would go missing, it would crash a lot, and as my network grew it became increasingly unreliable. I periodically re-install the latest updates of TweetDeck to see if it’s any better, but it’s just not a software experience I enjoy. If it works for you – and it clearly does for many – then great.

From TweetDeck I switched to Seesmic Desktop, and used to be a huge fan of that – right up until they made a lot of changes that I really did not like. These were significant enough for me to move on, which I did so almost immediately to HootSuite.

(Note: all the screenshots in this article are taken from my Samsung NC10 netbook.)

HootSuite

I’ve been a big fan of HootSuite for a long time, first blogging about the software back in February of last year, but I started using it in late 2009.

Initially this was exclusively at work – my social media team finds the software invaluable for the management of client profiles (of which we handle a great many). But because of problems I was having with Seesmic Desktop, I eventually started using HootSuite at home, too. Which was a very smart decision.

So when they offered the professional upgrade, I happily handed over my credit card. The software isn’t perfect – nothing is – but it’s the closest thing we have to the optimal Twitter client. It’s robust and hardy, but it also looks great, especially on a large screen. And because it’s web app it means that when I move to a new location (and often a new computer) and load it up, HootSuite is exactly where I left it. This is a plus that cannot be emphasised highly enough. It remembers.

I use a seven-column layout for my personal profile, which includes just one list. 99% of all my tweets come through HootSuite. There are improvements that could be made, but they’ll have to really drop the ball for me to look elsewhere any time soon.

Twitter.com

New Twitter hasn’t been to everybody’s taste but it was a huge improvement for me, and my time on Twitter.com was boosted accordingly. I rarely send any tweets there – it’s mostly for management of my network (follows and unfollows, as well as reading user profiles) as I still find Twitter.com the easiest and most reliable way to do this.

Twitter For iPhone

I’ve used many mobile Twitter clients on the iPhone and Blackberry platforms and find the official Twitter app (and before it, Tweetie 2) to be the best option for my needs. It’s slick and fast, and it just works. The experience is extremely positive. I know many don’t like that the only retweet option is the new kind, but as I rarely retweet when ‘on the road’ it doesn’t make any difference to me at all. Indeed, I rarely tweet at all through my iPhone – my interests when away from my desk are monitoring and reading the tweets of other people. And the official app is perfect for that.

HootSuite (iPhone)

I also use HootSuite on the iPhone for the same reasons I use HootSuite – it remembers where I left it, and all my columns and searches are right there whenever I need them. This is super-convenient for the management of client Twitter profiles. However, I don’t use the HootSuite app at all for my personal account.

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So, there you go: that’s me. You’ll have your own list of favourites, but I recommend all of these products highly. Please try them all. You might already have the perfect tools in place, but you can’t possibly know that until you’ve done a little experimentation. But always remember: what works for you, works.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

You come home and want to spend a bit of quality catch-up time on Twitter. So you log on, sit back… and stare thousands of unread tweets in the face.

Where do you even begin?

Remember Friendfeed? Sure you do. Friendfeed was the social aggregator that was like a more complex version of Twitter, and it came with a ton of really cool features. However, that complexity meant it never really took off with those all-essential masses. The site was acquired by Facebook in late 2009, and (in what was essentially a talent purchase) the good bits were sucked out and the rest of it was basically ignored. It’s still out there, but nobody really knows why. It’s all but been abandoned, visitor and press-wise, apart from a hardcore few and whatever programming team they can spare away from Facebook.

I don’t mean to sound so negative – I liked Friendfeed a lot, and on those few occasions when I wander back I still like it. One of its best features was Best Of Day (you’ll need to be logged in for this to work), which gave you access to a one-stop page that let you see the most popular entries amongst your friends (i.e., your network) over a given period, which defaulted to the last day.

This was incredibly convenient when time was scarce. Which, let’s face it, is most of the time.

Twitter needs this feature.

I want to be able to log in to Twitter and click one button and see an immediate summary of the past 24 hours. I want two options – one that lets me see the best of all of Twitter for that day, and one that shows me the best of my network. And I want to be able to filter this for the past week and month, too.

What is ‘best’? Best is the most retweeted, read and replied to content.

If we all had access to something like this, catching up with Twitter after (or during) work would be a breeze. Sure, you’re not getting the same rich experience you get from working your way through each and every tweet, or being on Twitter all day, but that’s not always something you’re able (or willing) to do.

Without this feature, a 10-minute end-of-day check-in with Twitter isn’t really an option. Much like lots of unread email, you either put in the time or take the shortcut to check all and ‘mark as read’. It’s counter-productive. And because Twitter is real time, once you’ve let too many hours go by you’re always chasing it.

Twitter needs this. I want it. What say you?

(PS. And before you ask – no.)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here’s our list of five productivity tools for Twitter that we love.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are our top 10 picks for including Twitter into your WordPress blog:
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.