HootSuite offers a professional and consolidated collection of Twitter-related tools. It is a website that you log into from your web browser from anywhere, not a program that you have to download and install.

You can set up HootSuite to manage one or several different Twitter accounts. From its slick interface, you can easily create and customize multiple tabs of tweets, and each tab can have one or more columns inside that further organize tweets. Each column represents some grouping of tweets, such as your home feed, mentions of your company or Twitter account, direct messages to you, pending tweets (that you haven’t sent yet), sent tweets, and various keyword searches for things you’d like to monitor. You can easily control column width, as well as drag and drop columns and tabs to change their order and position.

As mentioned, each column features a list of tweets matching the criteria you selected. Each tweet is accompanied by the photo/avatar of the tweeps (Twitter users like you and me), the time, date, and source of the tweet, and a group of buttons that easily let you Favorite/Unfavorite, Direct Message, Reply, or Re-Tweet. You may also click on the tweep’s name to view their Twitter profile.

Above the conglomeration of tabs and columns is a collapsible box from which you can tweet directly (from any of the Twitter accounts you set up in HootSuite). You can type your tweet, select one or more Twitter accounts to issue the Tweet, choose what day and time you’d like the tweet to go out, and even use its URL shortener (like the formerly mentioned bit.ly – http://bit.ly) to shorten long web addresses. So, HootSuite can be used to queue up multiple tweets in advance—for several different Twitter accounts.

For the more intensively-inclined Twitter user, HootSuite offers the ability for multiple users to log into your HootSuite account and manage it with various restrictions that you control. Further, it graphically tracks statistics about your Twitter usage, lets you monitor your company brand, and embed your custom HootSuite columns in other websites.

HootSuite is an excellent Twitter tool that we’ve been using for a couple weeks now with great success. I keep it open in my browser all day, and check it from time to time to keep tabs on my Twitter life. Take a look at it and let us know what you think!

Craig Samson

Once again, this month’s topic is about Search Engine Marketing and how to make your website be your best salesperson. Treat your website like a salesperson, holding it accountable just as you would a human salesperson.

After determining your expectations for your website it’s time to implement the changes necessary to meet those goals. A typical scenario for search engine marketing:

1. Your current site is reviewed and evaluated for a number of important factors.
2. The site is redesigned using Search Engine Marketing best practices.
3. Monitoring and measuring tools are also implemented so that progress can be better tracked.

Monitoring your site’s statistics is key. Based on the site’s performance, keywords, hierarchy, and content will be further tweaked in an attempt to continuously improve the site. Continually measure your ROI and analyze your specific goals, just as you would a salesperson.

Driving Site Visits
Here are a few things you can do on your path to search engine nirvana, as well as a few tools to make the trip a little more comfortable:

• Use social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others to drive traffic to your site and build an online network. Remember, though, from last month’s article, that these services use code that prevents a search engine from following a link to your site from these social media sites. This means that links from social media sites will not improve your search engine rankings, but may increase direct traffic to your site. Twitter is one of the fastest growing of these services, and the next couple tools will help you stay on top of Twitter traffic. Free informational webinar registration now open!
• Twuffer. Use this free web-based tool (www.twuffer.com) that lets you schedule tweets in advance so there’s no need to be at your PC when the tweets are sent out (perhaps a few times a day, if you keep up with it). This tool lets you plan out your tweets in advance, schedule them, and then frees you up for the rest of the day.
• TweetDeck. Use this free downloadable application (www.tweetdeck.com) to sort and categorize your incoming tweets. This tool lets you monitor Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. You can have it watch for mentions of your company and any other keywords so that you will know right away when somebody is looking for a service or product that you sell. This is a definite must-have tool for Twitter!
• Bit.ly. Use this tool (www.bitly.com) to shorten web addresses and track how many people click the links. Since your messages on Twitter, for instance, can only be 140 characters maximum, a hyperlink might chew up much of that space if you tweet a link. This, for instance, is a link to last month’s Solutions Development newsletter: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs020/1101120269844/archive/1102668641227.html (82 characters, leaving you a mere 52 to finish your tweet). Bit.ly lets you shorten these links to a more manageable size. This link: http://bit.ly/Tdg4y also takes you to the newsletter, but it’s much shorter (20 characters). Bit.ly will also track the number of clicks the link gets.
• SeoQuake for Firefox. You do look at your site in Firefox, right? It’s a good idea to have at least two web browsers on your computer. Firefox (free, and downloadable from www.mozilla.com) is a good second browser, especially since it offers the SeoQuake toolbar add-on (free Firefox add-ons are available from addons.mozilla.org) . This add-on adds a toolbar to Firefox that displays at a glance a series of useful measurements to aid with search engine optimization.

I hope you find this article helpful and informative. It is said that nothing worth doing is easy, and search engine marketing is a perfect example of that.

Craig Samson