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People have been asking me for more tips about how I use my Tweet Deck. I was sort of wanting to give twitter a little rest. However the response has been overwhelming, so here we are. I’m personally under the impression that there is no other client worth using. Yes it’s not the prettiest client around. At first it can be awkward to use. However once you learn how to use it like a power user, you’ll never know how you tweeted without it!

First time

When you first start your tweet deck up, you’ll be greeted with 3 columns. All Friends, Replies, Direct Messages, and there might be a TwitScoop column all the way at the right. If TwitScoop column is there, close it quickly with the X in top right. Also close the Replies column. What you want to do first is click on the Search button in the toolbar in the top left, it’s the magnifying glass icon =)

Now you’ll get a nice search box popping up. Write your twitter username into it. This is the column that will replace the replies one we closed earlier. The reason we do this is because sometimes people forget to add the @, also you’re own tweets come in there so you can remember what people are replying to =) Now use the arrow at the bottom of your new column to move it to where the old replies column was.

Settings

Something that is worth getting out of the way quickly. There are a few things you want to change right away. Start by turning off the annoying noise tweet deck does every time new tweets come in. Select the Narrow column view, lets you fit more columns in. You can uncheck the “Include All Friends Notifications” since it’s not a very informative notification. I personally prefer the Tweet Window at the bottom, try it out for yourself and see. One other thing that is optional is to Open profiles in web page, it’s good if you are big on looking at profiles since looking at them takes API calls. You only get 100 API calls an hour. I actually have this selected at work.

Here is what your general tab might look like:

You can play with the Colors/Font tab all you want, I’m not going to give you any pro tips on that =) However the API tab is something you need to look into. It’s hard for me to tell you exactly what is best in your situation, so here is a screenshot of how I have mine set.

Buddies

Once you reach a certain number of people that you follow, your going to want to set up a group. Click on the group button in the top toolbar.

In my case I only have one group set up. This group is for my close friends and family, people who’s tweets I don’t want to miss at all. I have very few people in this group just so it doesn’t get over crowded. I’m sure that once people have even more followers it will be nice to set up a few different groups for different groups of people. One for professionals, one for co workers, etc etc.

Now there are a few ways to add people to your newly created group. However I find the best way to do this is by mousing over their profile image, click on the more icon. You’ll get a dropdown where you can choose to add them to any group that you would like.

Looking at this menu you will see a lot of very useful features. One that I actually use on this list is the Translate one. Sometimes the people I’m following will write one and one tweet in a different language, and instead of unfollowing them like some people do, I just translate the tweet =)

Once you reach this point you should have a window that looks something like this:

Search and Filter

Now it’s on to what makes twitter so powerful. I’ve learned to use this to watch how my blog articles are traveling. See what people are talking about on a certain subject. You name it, the search functionality can do it. I’m sure I’m not using it for everything it can be used for yet, however it’s been very useful with how I’m using it as is.

You’ve seen how to do a search with your username and replies, so you achieve this in the same way. What I like to write in there is the name of a blog article that I’m promoting at the moment, since people that tweet about it rarely include my name in it anymore. Also this way I can find new people that like my articles and webpage, in return following them or get to know them. If your blog article is long enough it should be enough to just write it as is, however sometimes you might want to put quotes around it “How to blog like a pro” that way you get those words in exactly that order.

Another thing I like to do is have a open search on something I’m interested in like Sharepoint, Apple, CMS, PHP, Wordpress etc. This way if I see someone write anything interesting about something I’m INTERESTED in, I can add them =)

So here is an example of how my TweetDeck is now:

Now there is really one more thing left to talk about and that is the filter. I’ve talked about this before in an earlier article, however I want to include it here as well. At the bottom of every column there is a filtering button.

Like I’ve talked about here you can write things like http and RT @ to get some of the best of what your friends are talking about. You can filter more things than just for text, you can filter by User, by Time, and by Service they entered the tweet. So another thing I like to do is select services and write blip to get some good music people are talking about =)

One last thing about filtering before I wrap up this article is that you can also select to filter things MINUS a specific word, or time, or person etc etc. Can be very useful if someone is tweet spamming, or however you would like to use it =)

Conclusion

So now you guys have seen how powerful Tweet Deck can be. I’m sure there are so many more interesting ways to use it to make twittering more powerful and enriching. Please write about some good tips which you use all the time that are missing from this article. Would love to get some of your personal favored TweetDeck tricks!

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