Thing #42: Pimp Your Twitter

Sorry, I missed doing last month due to all the conference and travel that October always brings. However, I’m back and more than ready to talk about pimping Twitter. Here’s the services I use:

HootSuite

HootSuite is what I, and the Commission use to work with all of our Twitter accounts. There are many other services that allow an individual to track multiple columns of information and multiple social web accounts (Facebook, MySpcae, LinkedIn, etc.) However, the real power of HootSuite is the fact that we can connect multiple users to a single account. For example, Christa and I have the ability to post to the NLC_Tech twitter account, while I, Christa, Emily, Diane, and a few others have the ability to post to the NLC_News account. On top of that each of us can write a single post and then automatically send it to multiple accounts. For example, I can write a tweet and have it posted to my twitter account, NLC_Tech, and the Commission’s Facebook page, all with a single click. In my opinion, HootSuite is the way to go if you have multiple accounts and multiple users who need access to those accounts.

Flickr2Twitter

If you know me, you know I post a lot of photos to flickr. In some cases, I take a quick photo on my phone and want to make sure that it gets out to Twitter. However, I’d also like to archive the photo in my flickr account. Enter Flickr2Twitter, a feature of Flickr. To set this up, just log into your flickr account, and head over to the Emails & Notifications section of your account settings. Click the Edit link under Upload by Email options, and get your special secret e-mail address set up. Once you’ve done that, just take a photo and e-mail it to the your Flickr2Twitter upload email address. Send your photo off and it will both be archived in your Flickr account and a tweet pointing back to it will be sent. (The tweet will contain the text of whatever you put in the subject line of the e-mail you send.)

FuelFrog

I like tracking data. One of those data points is the gas mileage in my 1995 Saturn wagon with more than 188,000 miles. Enter FuelFrog. I linked it to my twitter account and now whenever I fill up I send a tweet to @fuelfrog which contains the miles since my last fill-up, the price per gallon, and the number of gallons I purchased. (I send this via a text message on my phone post fill-up.) FuelFrog collects the data and gives me a wonderful chart tracking my MPG. (For those wondering, I get much better mileage when I take the Saturn on the highway. Since I don’t do that often my usual six mile round trip commute does significantly lower my MPG.)

tHE ARCHIVISt

I discovered this site about a week ago so I’m still playing with it but so far I’m impressed. tHE ARCHIVISt serves two purposes. First, to archive your tweets. Second, to analyze your tweets and present you with some potentially useful data points, such as number of tweets vs. retweets, volume over time, and tweet sources. Maybe more interesting than tracking stats on your Twitter account, you can have it archive and tract stats on a search term. For example, if you have a hash tag that you want to track, set it up to track that. The down side is that it will only track three accounts or searches per Twitter account. (A special thanks to Amy from OPL for pointing out this one to me.)