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As you jump into Social Networking and Social Media I am sure you will see that there are hundreds of tools that you can use to manage your activity and there are several new tools surfacing every day.

I have tried several of these tools and use a handful on a daily basis.  I have however found a few that I would consider my favorite tools.  HootSuite is one of my favorites.

HootSuite is a web based tool that I have been using for several months to mange my twitter account and the accounts that I mange for others.  Here are a handful of reasons of why I originally selected HootSuite as a client to use:

• You can manage multiple accounts:
  HootSuite allows you to manage multiple Twitter Accounts from the dashboard.  You are able to add multiple accounts and even set them up with their own tab so that they are easily organized.  This is very helpful for those of us that have multiple Twitter accounts or mange accounts for others.

• HootSuite allows you to authorize multiple editors:
  This is a great feature.  HootSuite allows you to add people to your HootSuite account so that they can help manage your Twitter account, without you having to provide direct userid and password access to your Twitter Account.  This feature makes it really easy to set-up a business Twitter account and share the duties with others in your office.

• HootSuite allows you to schedule tweets:   (one of my favorite features)
  HootSuite allows you to set up your tweets to be tweeted at a scheduled time.  This is a great feature and it really helps you manage your time on Twitter.  This allows you to schedule a block of time during the day where you find great content to tweet and then you can set it up in HootSuite to be sent at a pre-scheduled time.

• HootSuite Offers Link Tracking: HootSuite has a built in tool to shorten links  ”ow.ly”, but in addition to just shortening your links you can also track who clicks on your links.  This is a great tool and it allows you to see what tweets are the most interesting and valuable

• Keyword Searches:
  HootSuite is great for monitoring keywords.  You can add a search to a tab and this will allow you to monitor tweets in real time on the keywords that you have selected.

• Nice Dashboard Interface:
  HootSuite has a nice dashboard that is set up with tabs.  You can select which tabs you show and also have groups of tabs.  I have one group of tabs for one profile that contains my home feed, my @replies, my dm’s and then the keywords I am watching as well as my scheduled tweets.

• Management of those you follow:
  HootSuite may not handle the follower management the best, however it is easy to select someone and either follow or un-follow them from HootSuite.

The features above are the main things that attracted me to start using HootSuite, however recently HootSuite has added several new features that are fabulous.

HootSuite now supports Twitter Lists as well as the ability to  update other Social Networks from HootSuite.  HootSuite has added support for Facebook, LinkedIn and Facebook Pages.

I am still testing out the new features for LinkedIn and Facebook, however from what I have seen so far I am really impressed.  I can now schedule posts to the Facebook Fan Pages I manage – this is a great time saver!

I will report back more later on my results of using HootSuite for Facebook and LinkedIn.

I would encourage you however to check out HootSuite and then stop back by and post your thoughts and results.

Here is a great video tutorial of HootSuite from HootSuite

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Hopefully you are now active on Twitter, if not I am hoping you are getting ready to take that plunge.  One thing you will want to do once you are on Twitter and have posted a few tweets is to select those that you wish to follow.

There are several ways to select who you want to follow on Twitter.  One quick and easy way is to follow your friends or those that you know to start with.  After you have followed your friends however it is time to get down to business and start to find and follow those that are talking about what you are interested in or who are your target market for business.

Here are some ways to locate those individuals on Twitter that fit the criteria of either they talk about what you are interested in or they are your target market for your purpose for being on Twitter.

Search for individuals talking about what you are interested in

There are several ways to find people to follow that are interested in what you want to hear.  I am only going to cover a few today, so please keep in mind there are many more.

HootSuite- Hoot Suite is a web based Twitter client that can be used to do many things (manage multiple twitter accounts, reply to people, follow people, schedule tweets, and more).  The focus on HootSuite today however is the ability to use it to search.  You can search in HootSuite for tweets that contain key words that you are interested in.  Once you find the people that are sharing tweets of interest to you from within HootSuite you can select to follow them.

Search Twitter – You can use good old fashion search Twitter and search on the keywords of interest and follow those individuals directly from Twitter

Tweep Find –  TweepFind allows you to search for a key word and find the top individuals based on user rank for that key word.  ( a similar tool is TweetFind, however this one is based on the Tweets instead of Tweeps)

Nearby Tweets – Nearby Tweets is an excellent way to search for those that are in a particular location and tweet about a particular topic.  This is an excellent tool if you are building a local list for people that may be interested in what you have to offer.

Browse a Directory with Twitter Users Listed

One great way to find people that you wish to follow is to use a directory.  The directories have people grouped based on their interests and what they tweet about.  Here are a list of a few directories to use to search for people to follow:

Twello – Twello is one of my favorite directories.  Individuals are grouped by basic categories as well as very well defined categories.  You can also search for people that contain certain words in their profile.  One thing I really like about this directory is that you can login directly and as you are browsing you can select those that you want to follow without having to move back and forth between the directory and Twitter.

TweetFind – This is a new directory that looks very promising.  It groups individuals into categories and it also ranks users.  One worth checking out.

GeoFollow – this is a directory that allows you to do a few different searches to find what you are looking for.  Another great tool to build a local list.

I am hoping that these tools with give you a place to start to find those to follow that are of interest to you and that you may be an interest to as well.

Good Luck finding and adding followers

-          Stefanie

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