Novice and experienced social media users, alike, may find
it difficult to keep track of who retweets their tweets, which customers or
followers “like” or place comments on their Facebook Page, or the number of
LinkedIn invitations they receive. This
is especially true for business owners who travel often or those who serve
customers away from their computer. This
blog posting, and the next few to follow, is not meant to describe the various
brands of dashboards inexistence, rather to highlight some of the usefulness
that dashboards provide.
It is possible to check all these accounts on a desktop by
accessing each individual website or downloading separate Twitter, Facebook,
FourSquare, etc. apps, but users may find that being able to manage multiple
accounts by accessing just one program can provide convenience, allow for
posting to multiple accounts, and save time by reducing the number of logins
necessary to read all postings and updates.
Using dashboards to monitor more than one account
There are several different dashboards that are available,
each with different advantages and disadvantages, but one that is mentioned
frequently and used to demonstrate features in this posting is HootSuite (see
example below). In the screenshot that I
have provided, you will see five tabs – each associated with a different social
network (within the red rectangle, from left to right: three twitter accounts,
a personal Facebook account, and the Ag. Entrepreneurship Extension Team
Facebook Page).
Adding lists you create and hashtags that you follow
Not only does a dashboard allow me to check these accounts
simultaneously, but I can add streams to each account. For example, while the home feed column
(leftmost column in the screenshot below) allows me to read all the tweets
posted by those I follow on Twitter, I can also see:
·
tweets that mention my Twitter handle (@kmk17psu)
grouped together (second column from the left),
·
tweets I have posted (third column), and
·
a list I created (A list is simply a way of
grouping those I follow on twitter by criteria I choose. For example, topic they tweet about or type
of business they operate. For more
Twitter lingo definitions consult: http://goo.gl/sgW1E). The example list you see below (in the
rightmost column) aggregates Tweets posted by select Penn State Extension
personnel (@kmk17psu/psu).
Alternatively, I can add streams that show results for
tweets which contain a particular hashtag (for a definition, visit: http://goo.gl/sgW1E). In the screenshot, to the left,
you will see a series of tweets each containing a hashtag I follow:
#winechat.
#Winechat is an event hosted
on Twitter each Wednesday night. Wine
professionals and those who just like to drink wine discuss a topic and each
person who posts a tweet related to the discussion includes #winechat so that
the tweets are grouped together and easier to search for on Twitter.
You may find that you do not want as many streams, or that
you would like more to be visible. What
is nice about most dashboards is that you do have the ability to customize
certain aspects, such as the number of accounts and streams that are
visible. In fact, this might be one of
your criteria for selecting a dashboard to use.
Sure, I can check all these streams by going directly to
Twitter.com but I like the ease of clicking on another tab and viewing other
accounts, such as the Ag. Entrepreneurship Extension Team Facebook Page (final
screenshot). Like the streams I set up
in the Twitter tab, I can have multiple streams on a Facebbook tab (e.g. wall
post stream and event stream).
This information should get you at least thinking about
using dashboards. In my next blog
posting I will describe some more dashboard features that you may helpful when
posting.
