All In Day’s Tweet

Note: You might want to read 300 Follows Is More Than Enough as well…

I thought I’d share the way I maintain a social network presence and fulfill my outsourcing contracts at the same time. From our “About justoutsourcing” section, you can see there are only two of us working through this site. My partner in crime is seemingly incognito, leaving me left with the bulk of what he called, “eye candy and fluffy stuff.” I dare not ask what he’s referring to though I have an inkling he’s describng all the things he doesn’t want to do. Maintaining a social presence is one of them.

Since most of the work I do revolves around writing something for someone, somewhere, writing messages onto a social network, or more specifically, “tweeting,” comes natural. Some of you asked how do I get any work done while I’m tweeting all the time. Well, this is how!

Type on Top, Tweet on Bottom

Work on Top

Play on Bottom

From this screen shot, you can see I have some important programs running on my computer at once. The most important are (1) Word 2007, used to write articles, (2) TweetDeck from which I read and respond to tweets, (3) Tweet Away, which sends out automated messages, and (4) Windows Mail, which alerts me to new email messages. I don’t have to interact with Tweet Away because it tweets on its own. And I don’t have to load Window’s Mail that much either because I just don’t get that much email! So throughout the day, I’m playing eye-pong with just two programs… one atop the other.

The Most Important Job is a Visual Priority

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Tweet Away and Windows Mail are minimized while Word and TweetDeck are stacked. I prefer this layout because it places the most important job (writing) up top, as a visual priority. With this arrangement, I’m free to write to my heart’s content while the visual below – the TweetDeck program – bleeps and bloops new tweets onto the screen. It takes just a quick glance to discern which tweet requires a response.

Only Relevant Twitter Questions or Comments

Learn more about Twitter with Twitter Power 2.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time.

The columns I display on TweetDeck are the “All Friends” column (displays who I’m following, usually news), the “Direct Messages” column (displays who’s talking to me privately), the “Mentions” column (displays who’s indirectly talking to me), and the “Search” column (displays tweets that address issues I’m interested in reading). Using TweetDeck’s filter function, I screen out “http” from the search columns so that I’m not inundated with ads. I can only see relevant questions or comments as a result.

Twitter Barely Interrupts Writing

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When a relevant question pops up, I can quickly reply. When a comment pops up, I can retweet it (if it deems worthy) or I can respond. It takes maybe half a second to respond or retweet, so my writing is barely interrupted! Whatever interruptions do occur, they serve 2 important purposes. They (a) give me an opportunity to strengthen our social presence and (b) give me a short relief from writer’s block. Some of the stuff on Twitter is uncannily related to what I write about!! How cool is that?

External Resources:

1. Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet at a Time
2. Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time