With the increasing popularity of social media, it can be tough for a journalist to manage all of their accounts in a convenient manner. Luckily, there are tools to help journalists, and the average user, manage their Twitter accounts.
One useful tool when it comes to Twitter is Tweetdeck. Since Twitter is such an important part of journalism, it's crucial to be active and on top of your account. Tweetdeck first started in 2008, and since then it has grown to be one of the most popular Twitter applications. Tweetdeck is a place where you can easily manage all of your Twitter accounts at once.
According to Alastair Reid (Journalism.Co.Uk), lists are the first things you should manage. This is important because you can see all the updates from the accounts you choose. You can search for keywords, see all of your mentions and messages, and even schedule tweets. Scheduling tweets is something that you cannot do alone on Twitter without an application. Having scheduled tweets can be very useful because a journalist may not always have the time to post tweets. Scheduling tweets also allows you to gather your thoughts so you won't forget when the time comes to post.
The thing about Tweetdeck is it updates your columns in real-time, so it's like a newswire for Twitter. https://t.co/QtfMztzZQg
— Steve Ladurantaye (@sladurantaye) October 22, 2014
A journalist can have many different Twitter accounts. A personal account, a professional account, and some other accounts for various jobs that they might have. Before apps like Tweetdeck, having all of these accounts would be difficult, but now you can view all your accounts on one page. Managing Twitter just got a whole lot easier for a working journalist.
As said by Elise Moreau, some Tweetdeck features are:
"Unlimited columns: As mentioned already, TweetDeck’s design is unique because of its column layout. You can add as many as you want for as many different profiles.
Automatic link shortening: If you insert a link into a post using TweetDeck, it will automatically be shortened. Under Settings >> Services, you can choose for it to be shortened with Twitter or Bit.ly.
Global filters: You can get rid of unwanted updates in your columns by filtering out certain text content, authors or sources. For example, you could add “#facebook” as a filter to prevent tweets with that hashtag in it from showing up in your stream.
Scheduled posting: You can create a dedicated column for all tweets you want to create ahead of time and schedule to be posted at a later date or time. This is useful if you don’t have time to be on TweetDeck all day.
Post to multiple accounts: TweetDeck highlights the profile picture of whichever icon you’re posting from, and you can select or deselect as many as you want to post a messages across multiple Twitter or Facebook profiles."